It’s hard to tell this morning what yesterday’s howling dry winds did to our snowpack. It’s the sort of thing that can cause sublimation, which means the loss of snow straight to atmospheric drying without ever having a chance to melt and make it to the rivers. It looks like some snow may have fallen …
Continue reading ‘Tracking flows on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande as irrigation season begins’ »
I feel this morning a bit like a kid watching the NORAD map of Santa on his global travels, as I hit “reload” on the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s new gaging data page. The district opened the diversion gates early this morning at Cochiti Dam, at the head of what we call New Mexico’s …
Continue reading ‘Watching the water spread across the Middle Rio Grande Valley Floor’ »
By John Fleck It is agonizing to watch this, but here we are. With efforts by the Colorado River Basin states to craft an agreement to share the river’s water skidding, brakes screeching, toward a cliff, we appear on the brink of repeating the disastrous mistake the authors of the Colorado River Compact made a …
Continue reading ‘Ignoring an Inconvenient Colorado River Basin Risk’ »
By Eric Kuhn One of the commentors to our January 19th, 2024, blog post titled “Are We headed for the First Colorado River Compact Tripwire?” – John C. (who, by-the-way runs a very talented water resources engineering firm) raised several finer points to explore further: The first point deals with obligations of each Basin to …
Continue reading ‘On the Colorado River, there are no Simple Disputes’ »
The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s crews will usher the first water into the ditches of New Mexico’s middle valley Feb. 26, district Water Distribution Division Manager Matt Martinez told the district’s board at yesterday afternoon’s meeting. The early water doesn’t go to irrigators right away. It’s needed to “charge” the system, wetting earthen ditches …
By Jack Schmidt | February 12, 2024 (cross-posted from the Center for Colorado River Studies) Nothing really changed in Colorado River Basin reservoir storage during January 2024. That is really good news as the basin prepares for the upcoming irrigation season. 1. Total basin water storage did not significantly change during January 2024 (Fig. 1, …
Continue reading ‘No Change in Reservoir Storage … and That’s Good News’ »
The UC Merced Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) points to drying over the Colorado River Basin over the next four weeks. EDDI is a new experimental tool that offers potential for tracking quickly emerging drought conditions by analyzing the evaporative demand of the atmosphere. It combines how moist things are with how hot and dry …
Continue reading ‘A dry forecast for the Colorado River Basin. A note on policy implications.’ »
Folks in Colorado’s San Luis Valley are engaged in a bold experiment in western water management – charging farmers for the water they use. Jerd Smith explains: A new rule approved by the area’s largest irrigation district, known as Subdistrict 1, and the Alamosa-based Rio Grande Water Conservation District, sets fees charged to pump water …
Continue reading ‘In Colorado’s San Luis Valley, paying for the water they use’ »
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an important hearing Thursday on S. 2385, a bill to refine the tools needed to help Tribal communities gain access to something that most non-Indian communities in the western United States have long taken for granted: federally subsidized systems to deliver safe, clean drinking water to our …
I’ve been updating the crufty old code I use to generate graphs to help me (and colleagues) think about river flows. This one’s a little busy, so maybe for specific nerd colleagues’ use, and not general consumption? It’s based on a request from a friend who uses these, and asked for a visualization of the …
Continue reading ‘Rio Grande flow at Otowi in decline, fancy graph edition’ »