The “official” call: the Rio Grande went dry in the Albuquerque reach, just upstream of the city’s wastewater treatment plant (click here for the map), on Sunday evening (July 13, 2025), for only the second time in the 21st century. “Dry” in this case has a formal definition. The thinning ribbons of water you see …
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The Rio Grande gage at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge is reading 20.5 cubic feet per second this afternoon (Sunday, July 13). The last time we saw river drying in the Albuquerque reach, back in 2022, 25 cfs at Central wasn’t enough to make it to the wastewater treatment plant outfall, as flows dwindled in the …
Rivers have a heritage but no beginning. Luna Leopold and William Bull, from their classic paper “Base level, aggradation, and grade.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 123.3 (1979): 168-202. That’s the juicy pull quote, but it’s maybe too cryptic. Here’s more context: Through geologic time even the first incipient channel system appearing on an …
Via GB News, Yorkshire Water has imposed a hosepipe ban following the region’s driest spring in 132 years: Locals have expressed their anger to the People’s Channel as the weather remains hot, and they are unable to complete tasks such as cleaning their cars, watering their gardens, filling domestic pools, and cleaning their windows. They …
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Like a blog post, but with yakking! Rin Tara and I on the coming of Albuquerque’s summer rains.
Most of Greater Downtown (Albuquerque) sits below the level of the Rio Grande, like a sort of high-desert New Orleans. Any rain that falls between the river’s east-bank levee and roughly Broadway will stay in the area until it evaporates, gets absorbed into the ground, or is otherwise dealt with. – Downtown Albuquerque News DAN …
One of my favorite examples of old ditches threading through our community is this spot, where the Armijo Acequia (AKA the Ranchos de Atrisco Ditch) emerges from a culvert that runs beneath the batting cages on Sunset SE near the Rio Grande. The ditch dates to the 1700s. Baseball is more recent, batting cages more …
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See note of correction/clarification below: Arizona yesterday finally moved the super-secret idea at the heart of current Colorado River negotiations out of the shadows. The idea is deceptively simple: base Lake Powell releases on a percentage of the three-year rolling average of the Colorado River’s estimated “natural flow” at Lee Ferry. Allocate water …
Via Allen Best, Brad Udall’s critically important comments at last week’s Getches-Wilkinson Colorado River conference: Within this basin, we can and have worked together to deal with a really sticky, difficult issue like climate change, to inform decision-making given the right partners, including the federal government at the table. Point two is our current climate …
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Fascinating observation from Jim Lochhead this morning at the Getches-Wilkinson Center Colorado River Conference about the nature of the current negotiations and the role of the federal government. It came during a panel moderated by Anne Castle focused on what we learned from the expiring 2007 river management guidelines, which are the subject of intense …