Basic Magnesium Inc. was a water materiel plant built in the desert south of Las Vegas in the early years of World War II. Its owner built a company town to house workers. This picture (which I love) says something powerful about the motivations and practices of turning a pre-fab desert shack into a home.
Today’s high in Durango was 59F (15C), 18 degrees above the 1981-2010 average for Feb. 8. In the mountains to the east – the mountains that provide Albuquerque’s San Juan-Chama drinking water – the snow has already begun to melt. The snowpack there is lousy to begin with – 62 percent of normal for this …
Continue reading ‘Very early runoff for the San Juan-Chama project’ »
The Texas Tribune (which I will never forgive for hiring my pal Jolie McCullough away from Albuquerque) is crowdfunding what sounds like a very interest bit of water journalism: Despite decades and billions of dollars spent trying to provide Texans living along the Mexican border with reliable access to clean drinking water, hundreds of thousands …
January was wet in southern New Mexico: But the farmers of the southern part of the state are among those with the highest drought risk this year. How could that be? Diane Alba Soular does a nice job of explaining that it’s snow in the mountains, which creates Rio Grande runoff, that matters. Rain at the …
Continue reading ‘NM Drought: it depends on where the rain is falling’ »
I have long assumed that the Eastern New Mexico Water Supply Project, also known as the Ute Pipeline, was one of those zombie water projects that never quite dies but will never be built, either. The idea is to build a pipeline from the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission’s Ute Lake on the Canadian River …
Continue reading ‘New life for one of the West’s zombie water projects?’ »
January was dry in the water-producing parts of the Colorado River Basin. The official Feb. 1 forecast for the Colorado River above Lake Powell (the part of the Basin where all the water comes from) calls for just 80 percent of median April-July inflow. That’s a big drop from the Jan. 1 forecast, which called …
Continue reading ‘A lousy January in the Colorado River Basin’ »
update Feb. 4: The official numbers are out, largely unchanged from the preliminary numbers: Otowi max: 107 percent mid: 63 percent min: 33 percent San Marcial max: 108 percent mid: 49 percent min: sorta zero (the models have a hard time with the bottom end of the range at San Marcial) previously: The NRCS preliminary …
Continue reading ‘Feb. 1 Rio Grande forecast numbers – still bad’ »
In the Navajo Times, a piece about Darlene Arviso, the water lady. She drives a big truck around to homes on the eastern side of the reservation without running water, of which there are many: Armed with her cellphone and massive truck, Arviso heads out into the community to deliver water to families in need. …
Continue reading ‘“I’ve been born and raised, still hauling water.”’ »
Using NASA data, some scientists built these maps of California farm land fallowed during the drought. Green is planted, brown is fallowed:
The new monthly U.S. drought outlook, out this morning, has good news for New Mexico: But wait, I thought that idiot Fleck told us in Sunday’s paper that water managers were bracing for another dry year in New Mexico. What gives? This: The question of who might be hurt and who will avoid the pain …