My 17 minutes of fame
Matt Grubs talked to Laura Paskus and I on last night’s In Focus on local public telly. It perhaps goes without saying that we talked about water.
Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Las Conchas and a search for optimism about wildfire
Lissa and I took a drive Sunday up State Route 4 through the Jemez to look at the big Las Conchas burn one year later. A couple of points worth noting: Miles of forest that has not burned Lots of forest that burned healthy (sprouting aspen on the forest floor) Elk grazing in the Valle …
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the 2012 deluge
It’s all relative, I guess. I just finished my June backyard rain sheet for the National Weather Service, and realize I’ve had 8 times as much precipitation in the first six months of 2012 as I did over the same period last year – 2.21 inches (5.61 cm) compared to 0.27 inch (0.69 cm) last …
Fire
Hillary Rosner, writing at the New York Times, talked to Craig Allen and captured the essence of the angst as the west burns: “These forests did not evolve with this type of fire,” said Dr. Allen. “Fire was a big deal in New Mexico, but it was a different kind of fire.” The result, he …
On dams, pipes, and western water
When I interviewed Mike Connor, the Bureau of Reclamation’s then-newly minted commissioner, back in 2009, one of his central points was that the era of American dam building was behind us: Michael Connor, the New Mexican who took over as head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation three months ago, inherited an empire. It is …
Clickwhoring the monsoon
Over at the work blog, I’ve been having fun with the onset of the North American Monsoon (or lack thereof). My smartypants idea Tuesday, to crowdsource the problem of predicting the onset of our summer rains, turned out in retrospect to be lousy. I made a spreadsheet and everything. So far just four entires, what …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: forecasting is hard, especially about the monsoon
In the morning paper, I pine over our elusive monsoon forecast: I know this is the time you would really like a forecast. You would really like to know when New Mexico’s summer rains will finally get here, and whether we will have a wet monsoon season. Sorry. Can’t help. Believe me, I’d like to. …
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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: ABQ water infrastructure
On Albuquerque’s appearance in the “our pipes are getting old!” discussion: Albuquerque’s water and sewer utility, facing hundreds of millions of dollars in costs over the next decade to replace aging pipes and treatment plants, is considering a series of rate increases in the next five years. When the last of the proposed rate hikes …
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Boating in Albuquerque
Suggested storylines welcome.
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: climate change and megafires
With the Whitewater-Baldy fire pushing 260,000 acres (New Mexico’s largest by a wide margin), I spent some time talking with the forest-climate community about climate change, forest health and the role of natural variability in creating the conditions for the southwest’s recent megafires: Global warming is playing a role in the conditions in the Gila …
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