Another episode in my effort to explore the meaning of “drought” by way of example. Up on Albuquerque’s north side is a spot the birders call the “Tramway wetland”*. It’s the spot where the main flood control channel for much of Albuquerque slows before entering the Rio Grande. The local flood control authority has designed …
Continue reading ‘More on the definition of “drought”: a dry spot’ »
From the work blog, some material from a discussion among drought researchers on the Sheffield Nature paper and the question of when the Palmer Drought Severity Index is or isn’t the right tool for the drought measurement job. Here’s Dave Gutzler: Despite its many limitations PDSI is still a meaningful indicator of short term climate …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: on drought metrics’ »
From Saturday’s newspaper, my story about a state court ruling against a proposed groundwater transfer case in New Mexico: State officials made clear Friday that, while they ruled against this application because of its failure to specify where and how the water would be used, they do not in general oppose water transfers around the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: court rules against New Mexico water transfer’ »
When the federal government and the seven US states that share the Colorado River signed their 2007 “Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead,” the final Record of Decision (pdf) included several chunks of legalese to the effect that the deal, while binding on the US …
Continue reading ‘How the US-Mexico Colorado shortage/surplus sharing deal works’ »
Just the blog equivalent of thinking out loud here. It’s not that this data was surprising to me, so much as that I wasn’t sure what to expect. Four cities in the western United States with some similar characteristics – arid climate, water supply challenges, growing populations. Each of the four is the dominant population …
Continue reading ‘nota bene: population growth in the West’s urban archipelago*’ »
A small but interesting water law/politics/policy case is emerging in northern New Mexico, involving a request by a Sangre de Cristo mountains ski area to use more water for its snow-making equipment. This is the sort of case that hinges on the withdrawal/consumption distinction – how much water a user withdraws from the system, versus …
Continue reading ‘Water transfers: the view from downstream’ »
If you needed another prod to sign up as a CoCoRaHS weather observer, now you can get PRISM data for your own neighborhood. I’ve got 13 years of precip data for my house, first as part of the Albuquerque National Weather Service’s CityNet program, and now as a CoCoRaHS observer. But 13 years is too short …
Continue reading ‘Heineman-Fleck house monthly climate report, now with new improved PRISM data’ »
The folks on the Inkstain Economics Desk point to an intriguing puzzle, in the form of 22 shipping containers out behind the neighborhood MegaWalMart this morning. We’ve long used the Cheap Shit From China index (CSFC) here at Inkstain as a crude but useful economic barometer. The premise is this: WalMart has better data than …
Forgot to blog earlier in the week, a frustratingly inconclusive newspaper piece on the reasons behind the rising cost of refurbishing the US stockpile of B61 bombs: Is Sandia National Laboratories to blame for cost overruns in the multibillion-dollar effort to refurbish the U.S. arsenal of B61 nuclear bombs? A December 2011 evaluation by the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: more on the B61’ »
In the midst of reading Nate Silver’s book, I felt like I ought to say something nuanced about the seasonal forecast that came out this morning: In this morning’s briefing, the forecasters were careful to explain that they’re not making predictions here, but rather forecasting odds – “probabilistic” in the jargon: “These impacts are not …