This is one of my favorite views of U.S. climate, providing a quick and easy way to squint and get a feel for what’s going on across the entire continental U.S. It’s the USGS streamflow map, with color showing today’s flow relative to the long term mean for this date. Red’s dry, blue and back …
More bad news out of Australia: “There’s no doubt that much of the estimated winter crop is now lost due to the ongoing dry conditions,” Macdonald said Saturday. “Wheat and barley are among those crops hardest hit — as a result we could see everything from bread to beer made in New South Wales cost …
Watercrunch details the imminent drying of Atlanta. It’s worth remembering here that, as opposed to sub-Saharan Africa, likely no one will starve to death in Georgia. But it’s still a quite extraordinary situation: The thought of a huge city the size of Atlanta running out of water sounds apocalyptic in our age of progress.
water politics: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw are going to stop Caesar’s evil plot to steal groundwater to build subdivisions. water politics II: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw may need to head over to Arizona next. water politics III: …
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: As northern Georgia suffers through a monumental drought and the toughest water restrictions ever imposed, Stone Mountain is using up to 38 gallons of water a minute — for 12 to 18 hours a day for the next month — to make snow. On the day Gov. Sonny Perdue took the …
Continue reading ‘I Guess This is One Way to Respond to Drought’ »
From today’s Judge Parker, it looks like Sophie’s on to something big: “A company in Nevada has been slowly buying agricultural property all over the West!” “So?” “They’re buying the property to gain access to the water underneath!” Smart girl. This sounds like trouble. (Hat tip Kelsey.)
Staci Matlock has a good story in this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican outlining the regulatory dilemma facing New Mexico related to Sandoval County’s hunt for brackish water for desalination: This new, deep source of water poses a regulatory challenge to the state engineer, who is charged with overseeing New Mexico’s increasingly precious water resources. …
Continue reading ‘Inland Desalination: The Regulatory Side’ »
Rio Grande Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Looking south down the Rio Grande from the Paseo del Norte Bridge in Albuquerque Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007. That’s maybe 450 cubic feet per second of flow, which is getting down toward what they call “base flow“. That’s the minimum flow in a desert river, the point at which …
Hoover Dam – Small Version Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. From our trip to the New Mexico State Fair a week ago. It’s a scale model of Hoover Dam, the great monument to America’s confidence in its ability to tame the great Colorado River and make the desert bloom. I’ve always loved the triumphant architecture of …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Muscular Americana Edition’ »
Every state in the Western U.S., save Colorado, currently has below average reservoir storage.