By request, a graph of the San Francisco River near Glenwood, New Mexico
I’ve no idea what’s going on here, but a reader asked, so here’s a graph of the San Francisco River near Glenwood, New Mexico.
Archive of posts filed under the water category.
Circa 1983, an early view of climate change and western water
From New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoff’s October 1983 piece examining some of the more significant findings in a new National Academies report on the implications of climate change: Paul E. Waggoner, a member of the assessment committee, said in an interview that ”people in California will be drinking their water,” instead of using it …
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Central New Mexico water agency cutting back some of its irrigators
Reservoir levels dropped over the weekend past a critical trigger point, causing the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District to curtail water deliveries this week to about 5,000 acres of farmland in central New Mexico. With El Vado Reservoir on the Rio Chama just 26 percent full, the decision to cut deliveries to the MRGCD’s “water …
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Drought, climate change – we know more than we used to
Ben Cook, Justin Mankis, and Kevin Anchukaitis have an extremely helpful review paper in Current Climate Change Reports (ungated, thanks) sorting out what we do and don’t know about the impact of climate change on droughts. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report was cautious in its assessment of our knowledge of drought, reporting only “low confidence” …
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Golf
According to the USGS, there are 1,300 acres of golf course in Bernalillo County (Albuquerque etc.), using 6,100 acre feet per year of water. Which makes the water policy implications of this this Nolan Gray story fascinating: Golf is dying, many experts say. According to one study by the golf industry group Pellucid Corp., the …
Lowest flow ever recorded on New Mexico’s Gila River
If my math is correct, flow on the Gila River gauge located near Gila, New Mexico, dropped today to the lowest ever measured, in a record that goes back 89 years. The red line is the daily flow, in cubic feet per second, as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey. The cloud of gray lines …
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In water policy, we often refer to “the Mad Max scenario”
Some context on central New Mexico’s big June 4 storm
Out bike riding yesterday morning, my friend Scot and I were watching the radar app and judging wind and storm direction, dodging the occasional raindrops with a spectacular sky around us. (In fact our ride was delayed because Scot had to put the goat in, something about lightning-goat risks.) But despite the stormy show, the …
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How to crash Lake Mead: Step 1 – crash Lake Powell
A new analysis suggests Lake Powell could crash in less than three years if there were to be a repeat of drought (aridification?) conditions seen in the recent past. While the basin community’s attention has been focused on the risk of Lake Mead plummeting at some point in the future, Lake Powell at the bottom …
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How Lake Mead could crash
Speaking last week before the Imperial Irrigation District board, Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman showed this remarkable slide. It is remarkable for obvious reasons – it shows how easily we could crash Lake Mead! But it’s remarkable in a more subtle way that reflects a shift in our approach to the hydrologic analysis of the Colorado …