It rained this afternoon at my house. The physics of raindrops, I once learned, means that the largest raindrops falling out the bottom of a thunderhead hit first, and I was sitting in my office at the back of the house writing when I heard them banging onto the metal roof. I went out to …
Been a busy week (what with New Mexico burning down) with little to show for it other than an overactive Twitter feed, but I caught my breath this morning and threw together some thoughts on weather, climate, forest management, drought, and the unnerving fact that I had to cut my morning bike ride short because …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Weather, Climate, Forest Management, Fire, Drought’ »
From the morning paper, some thoughts (sub/ad req) from my recent trip on the west-wide linkages, and the institutional problems those linkages have created: “We’ve got a system that is not sustainable,” said Curt Schmutte, Met’s top official working on the Delta problem. Given the political rancor that surrounds California’s Delta discussions, it is unclear …
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We’ve received 2.15 inches (5.46 cm) of precipitation since Oct. 1 (the “water year”) at the Heineman-Fleck house in Albuquerque. That’s 44 percent of average for the first 8 months of the water year. (My average is based on data going back to the 1999-2000 water year.) A sidelight: 1.41 inches of that (3.58 cm) …
When Lissa and I were up in Santa Fe a few months back, I took along the binoculars and took a walk along the Santa Fe River as it passes the old city’s downtown, hunting birds. I found few. Because it’s not much of a river, really. As David Groenfeldt notes, there’s an effort underway …
From the morning paper, a look at the way this year’s drought has laid bare a Byzantine argument over how to properly divide up the waters of the Lower Rio Grande between Texas and New Mexico farmers (sub/ad req.): Water flows down the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico today, past parched farmers who cannot …
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I’ve triggered some puzzlement among California water folks as I call around trying to understand the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in preparation for my trip out there next month. Why does a New Mexican care? Other than the fact that it’s fascinating, of course. I mean what water wonk wouldn’t be fascinated by California’s water problems. …
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The drama on the Mississippi has spawned a lot of good writing on the disconnect between how nature thinks about flood plains versus how we think about them. As Anne Jefferson wrote, the bits next to our rivers tend to be the most desirable places to live: People are drawn to settle on floodplains – …
From the morning paper, a wander in the bosque to look for signs of drought (sub/ad req.): There is a resilience, it turns out, to these desert ecosystems. They’re used to this happening every so often, and they know what to do in response. Some leaf out less, or leaf out later. Some depend on …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Lessons from a Drought’ »
How dry is it this year in New Mexico? So dry that rafters on the Rio Chama will have to use spare drinking water, pumped through the system weekends this spring and summer, for their fun. From Friday’s ABQJournal (sub/ad req, I think): Albuquerque has to move its water supplies down the Rio Chama sometime, …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Rafting on Drinking Water’ »