Boom!
The graph uses day-long averages. The actual peak yesterday was over 3,000 cfs at the Central Avenue Bridge. Here’s what it looked like around noon:
Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.
Lowest flows ever recorded on New Mexico’s Gila River
Update 6/17/2022: Update: Based on a conversation with a friend familiar with the plumbing in and around the Gila gage, caution is in order pending a USGS recalibration, which we’re hoping for soon. Measuring flows this low is hard! Thanks to a question from alert Inkstain reader S, I see that flows on the …
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New Mexico 2024 End of May Reservoir Storage
With the snow mostly melted, it’s time for a fresh look at the water storage situation on New Mexico’s Rio Grande – water saved from the spring runoff this year, and carried over from previous years, to use for irrigation, municipal use, and environmental flows during the summer. Total reservoir storage got a bump up …
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To’Hajiilee water line groundbreaking: “an impossible project”
With the obligatory shovels in pre-softened dirt, a group of political leaders from the Navajo Nation, New Mexico state and local government, and water agencies this morning (Wed. 5/15/2024) formally inaugurated a new pipeline being built to connect the Navajo community of To’Hajiilee to the 3.5 million gallon reservoir in the picture – clean, piped …
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Finding an alternative place to park Middle Rio Grande water options with El Vado Dam out of service
Two key takeaways from Monday’s (May 13, 2024) Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board meeting: El Vado Dam, crucial for managing irrigation, municipal, and environmental water through New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande valley, will be out of service indefinitely – for many, many years. The vague structure of alternative storage options, using other existing dams, …
El Vado Reservoir update on today’s (May 13, 2024) Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board agenda
We’ll get an update on the status of El Vado Dam and related issues at this afternoon’s (Mon. 5/13/24) meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s board of directors. This is an enormously consequential issue for Rio Grande flows through central New Mexico. The Meeting Today’s board meeting starts at 3 p.m. at the …
Floating Albuquerque’s Rio Grande: notes on “naturalness”
The Rio Grande is up through Albuquerque right now, swollen with spring snowmelt. But not for long. We may already have hit the runoff peak at a bit above 3,000 cubic feet per second in late April, and a friend who’s been cheerfully nagging me to float it with them talked me into locking down …
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Rapid snowmelt on New Mexico’s Rio Grande
A recent rapid warmup has brought high flows to the Rio Grande through New Mexico. But with a modest snowpack sitting in the mountains to the north, that means we should expect the early rise to be followed by an early drop. Members of the Inkstain Rio Grande Rapid Response Team (IRGRRT) were busy over …
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The loss of El Vado: some followup
A couple of followup notes related to last week’s post about the news on El Vado Dam on the Rio Chama, crucial to water management on New Mexico’s Rio Grande, thanks to my many alert and thoughtful Inkstain readers…. Rio Grande Compact Debt In the comments, Norm Gaume made a point that’s worth pulling out …
Drifting back toward La Niña
This month’s update from the U.S. government’s Climate Prediction Center suggests we’re drifting back toward La Niña, which would tip the odds toward a dry winter of 2024-25 for New Mexico and the mountain snowpacks on which we depend.