Archive of posts filed under the water category.

Deadpool Diaries: In March, the Rio Grande/Colorado River snowpack went bonkers

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The ditches were flowing across Albuquerque’s valley floor yesterday as I criss-crossed them on a long, aimless bike ride, the first day it really felt like spring. The cycling challenge at this winter<->spring pivot point is clothing – layers for a morning start hovering just above freezing, with a pannier stuffed with the layers by …

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To use or refill? (a good mid-March Colorado River Basin forecast raises the question)

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With more wet in the forecast, the latest numbers from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center look very good right now: The active weather pattern that began around mid-February continued through mid-March across the region. Precipitation was above to well above normal across most of the region during the first half of March. March 1-16 …

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Deadpool Diaries: Colorado River report card

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With the March 24-month study out, a status report on the Colorado River Basin’s critical numbers. I’ve added the “minimum probable” forecast this time to help better understand the risk profile. In brief, water users continue to take more water out of Lake Mead than is flowing in. Most Probable Lake Mead million acre feet …

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Does 2023’s “cabin crusher” of a snowpack herald a return of California’s Tulare Lake?

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It is easy to forget that California’s Tulare Lake, in the southern San Joaquin Valley, once competed with Lake Cahuilla (the “Salton Sea”) for the title of “largest lake west of the Mississippi”. We drained it. We farm it. But as Erica Gies happily reminds us at every opportunity, water is a formidable adversary if …

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Inching toward El Niño

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Today’s ENSO outlook (El Niño Southern Oscillation) suggests a consensus among “the models” that the odds are tipping toward an El Niño for the coming summer and fall. The humans in the loop are more bearish: The most recent IRI plume favors ENSO-neutral to continue through the spring, with El Niño forming during summer 2023 …

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March 1 runoff forecasts are solid

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With a solid snowpack in all of my rivers, we’ve got a pair of solid March 1 forecasts for 2023 runoff. Rio Grande 102 percent at Otowi, the main forecast point for water entering New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. Implications: While we don’t have a formal Annual Operating Plan for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County …

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Deadpool Diaries: Defining the “Crisis”

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Seven years ago, as I was finishing my book Water is For Fighting Over, I wrote this kicker: In the end, we need an honest reckoning with the basic problem: there is not enough water for everyone to do everything they want with it, or to use every drop to which they feel legally entitled. …

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Deadpool Diaries: On California and our moral obligation to share the burden of climate change

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Brad Udall gave a talk in 2013 that became foundational to my thinking about solving the challenge of life with a shrinking Colorado River. Here’s how I described it in my book Water is For Fighting Over: Udall distinguished between the “reality of the public” and the “reality of the water community,” describing a world …

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