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 …
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 …
Continue reading ‘Lowest flow ever recorded on New Mexico’s Gila River’ »
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 …
Continue reading ‘Some context on central New Mexico’s big June 4 storm’ »
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 …
Continue reading ‘How to crash Lake Mead: Step 1 – crash Lake Powell’ »
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 …
Another of my attempts to visualize data from this remarkably bad water year in New Mexico. The cloud of gray lines is flow at the Gila gauge as the river leaves its headwaters mountains in southwestern New Mexico, one line for each year. The red line is this year – significantly lower than in any …
I took the long way home from a meeting in Alamos, Colorado, yesterday to make a pilgrimage to San Luis. In the Culebra Valley of Colorado in the high country near the New Mexico border, San Luis lays claim to being the oldest town in Colorado, settled by the descendants of Spanish immigrant families. Native …
Continue reading ‘Old water – the San Luis People’s Ditch’ »
I stopped on the Gail Ryba Bridge over the Rio Grande this morning, the bike bridge adjacent to Interstate 40 that offers one of the great views of our river. The morning light was lovely, I saw a couple of egrets in the ditch down below. I love this place. Flows right now are stable …
Putting together a talk for our (UNM’s) big water conference tomorrow, I had occasion to fall completely in love with this Arthur Rothstein photo from his 1936 trip through New Mexico for the Farm Service Administration: