Finishing the new book has thrown me into a time warp. We’re about to hand in a manuscript for a book that traces a century and a half of the evolution of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande, leading up to now. But the now of the act of writing (November 2023) is different from …
I emerged this morning from a month (Six weeks? Two months? I’ve lost track of time.) of writing about the crucial period from 1918-ish to 1931-ish in Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande. The period right now takes up four chapters of Ribbons of Green, the book Bob Berrens and I are writing, which is …
Apologies for the pixelated image. I just had the phone, not a camera, and the great blue heron flew before I could get close enough to get a good shot. I got to the river just as the sun crested the Sandias this morning, and the light was gorgeous. I’m giving a kinda important talk …
Continue reading ‘Thinking about the Rio Grande, remembering history’ »
There’s so much going on in this picture. The buildings on the horizon, downtown Albuquerque, are a couple of miles away – foreshortened by the camera’s zoom. It’s a modest downtown, which grew up in that spot 140 years ago because the real estate entrepreneurs collaborating with the newly arrived Athchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe …
Continue reading ‘Watching Albuquerque’s Rio Grande go dry’ »
I spent a couple of days last week out of Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado, touring forest restoration work in the headwaters of the San Juan-Chama Project, which produces critical water supplies for central New Mexico. In others words, water for my neighhbors and me. We’ve learned over and over in the last couple of …
August 8 is more than a little late for Albuquerque’s first solid monsoon rains to break our weirdly hot flash drought, but we’ll take it. Typical monsoon onset here is early July, plus or minus a week-ish. At the risk of overstating because of a lack of precision, Aug. 8 is record late. I was …
Continue reading ‘Breaking Albuquerque’s flash drought: Biggest monsoon storm in a decade’ »
Area water managers were informed this morning that the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority will shut down its diversion of water from the Rio Grande for use in the municipal drinking water system, switching over to groundwater pumping to meet municipal needs. The reason is low flows in the river. Albuquerque is constrained by …
The Rio Grande, already dry in the San Acacia reach south of Socorro, has begun drying in the Isleta reach south of Albuquerque. And with a record hot dry summer, we could see it dry in Albuquerque again this year, as it did last year for the first time in 40 years. Via Dani Prokop: …
Continue reading ‘Rio Grande through Albuquerque could dry again this year’ »
Breaking out of my old “water policy writer” habits is hard. The bridges of Albuquerque are helping. Counting and Measuring Prepping for an appearance on this Friday’s New Mexico In Focus on NMPBS, I’ve spent a bunch of time the last few days digging through agricultural water use data. (Spoiler alert: Ag water use has …
Continue reading ‘Ribbons of Green: what we mean by “water policy”’ »
July is, in general, Albuquerque’s hottest month. This year’s was the hottest July we ever had. All kind of weather records…. Average overnight low of 72.3F was the warmest for that measure in a dataset going back to 1892. Total measured precipitation at the airport, our official measurement station, was just a trace – tied …
Continue reading ‘In Albuquerque, a record for July unpleasantness’ »