USBR March 2025 Rio Grande runoff forecast

This week’s newest U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Rio Grande runoff model runs have triggered a string of “wait, what?” conversations this afternoon at the Utton Center.

• possible drying through Albuquerque as early as June, with a good chance of drying even earlier
• we may already have passed the spring runoff peak
• irrigation supplies, already short for Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District farmers, will be even shorter

The early March simulations, which are based on the latest snowpack and runoff forecasts, are ratcheting up the anxiety among water managers as they scramble to manage conditions unprecedented in modern Rio Grande management. Looking at the graph above, you can see what a typical year looks like, with flows rising through late may. That black-to-purple line is the most likely flow this year

Even before the new model runs, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District was warning valley irrigators that, with little water in storage to supplement dwindling river flows, irrigation supplies would be unreliable by summer. Based on my analysis of the new numbers (danger, Fleck doing math!) that could come a lot sooner. According to Reclamation’s median forecast, we have already seen the runoff peak on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque. (Our 2025 peak so far technically was around 1,000 cfs Jan. 1, but that’s just moving last year’s water, rhetoric rather than hydrology.)

We could still have some monsoon rains that temporarily push the river up past the March 8 spring runoff peak of 600 cubic feet per second. But monsoon bursts aren’t enough, in terms of volume of water, to make up for the pitiful snowpack, made more pitiful by the hot dry spring winds that have been eating it away.

The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority had already been projecting that it would need to shift away from surface water, using groundwater pumps to meet municipal needs, sometime this summer. The Inkstain News Gloom Team will keep an eye on that for y’all.