Re my post earlier today about my snowy, muddy backyard, it’s worth pointing out that Albuquerque’s only received a total of 0.05 inch of precip since Jan. 1 at the airport, (0.25 at my house), well below normal for the month. It’s a late December storm that left things so muddy.
One of the difficulties in thinking about drought conditions is the tendency to look out your window. Out mine, there’s a nice little blanket of snow, and I’ve got to kick snow or mud off my feet when I come in out of the backyard. But the West is a big and exquisitely interconnected place, …
Marty Hoerling’s discussion of western U.S. drought in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report model runs (which I wrote about last fall) is out: Our study reveals that a sustained change in moisture conditions is unfolding within the broad range of natural variations. The Southwest is likely past the peak water experienced in the 20th century …
U.S. Precipitation, Last 90 Days Precipitation Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. This is not the U.S. precipitation pattern you expect in an El Niño winter. Here in Albuquerque, we’re living under a bit of an illusion, with the fourth storm since Christmas currently snowing east and north of us and clouds and a threat of rain …
Mike Campana, one of my favorite water academics, launches WaterWired with a reprise of the case against bottled water.
San Juan-Chama Project pipe, Albuquerque, Jan. 7 2007 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. When I was in Phoenix a couple of years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Frank Lloyd Wrightish Biltmore. Phoenix is flat-out desert, hot, just 7.5 inches of rain (19 cm) a year. But the Biltmore is an oasis, green, cool and …
In the U.S. western water community, John Wesley Powell is a legend for his insight about the difficulties of building a society in an arid land. But we can be a bit parochial here in the states, so until today I’d never heard of his (sort of) Canadian counterpart, John Palliser. Palliser explored the northern …
It looks yesterday’s premise is holding – despite the extraordinary blanket of white in my backyard, the snowpack in the Rio Grande Basin, source of a big chunk of New Mexico’s water supply, didn’t pick up a whole lot from the Great Storm of ’06. Tom Pagano, who does the runoff forecasts for us out …
Storm ’06 – cactus Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. This is the sort of thing tailor-made for Us Media, and we “people of the year” are in full flower today in Albuquerque.
Dec. 30, 2006 Colorado Snowpack Map Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. It’ll be another few days before the InterWeb data sources catch up with what the eastern two Four Corners states must call the Big Storm of 2006, but the preliminary data suggests that the water supply implications are less significant than the enormous pile of …
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