River's up

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Wow. Two years ago, or maybe three, you could walk across the little Animas River without getting your feet wet. At noon today, it was lapping at the hard packed road in Berg park. At 6:00 p.m., one section was under three inches of water. Well, heavy snow pack in the mountains combined with unseasonably warm weather does what it does.

It looks weird, though. Sun shining, blue skies all around, and it rises almost visibly. No threat to property so far as I can see, but the stuff washing down is way beyond the firewood stage. You could build a fair size cabin with some of the logs and trees migrating to California.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 2,221 • Replies: 23

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I have a friend sending me twice a day photos of Lake Isabella rising....

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I should check the batteries and load up the old 35mm.

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Goddamn. You're getting our rain.

We are two months on from the usual season break.

Looks like a drought is gonna happen here - joining other areas locked in it for years now.

Global warming predictions said this was gonna happen.

??????????????????????

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I'm inclined to believe it, Deb. We had quite a warm winter with lots of rain and very little snow. Of course, in the mountains, it came down as snow, which is great if it doesn't all melt before summer. Thing is, it hasn't rained here in weeks. Not hard to understand that snow melts, but still, it seems strange to see the river rising like that in dry weather.

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Imagine you had a two mile thick gacier up around The Colorado Border and it was melting for a few thousand years. We have whole states back east that didnt exist until the glaciers finished melting . People in Delaware wonder what all that sand and gravel is in their gardens. Its New York State

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Always an interesting take, Farmerman!

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I didnt take anything, you didnt see me, and you cant prove it anyway.

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Can. Infrared vision. It's the carrots, you know.

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I'm always fascinated by the aquatic ecology in your neck of the woods, Roger. I remember the first time I drove from Albequerque to Roswell. Had never been in NM before in my life. Came to a kind of bridge with a sign indicating that I was about to pass over the Rio Grande. Looked down. Just an empty ditch, what's called a 'draw', I believe. Big River, indeed. I assume that in the rainy season there actualy is some water in that draw, gully, gulch, whatever. Hard to reconcile it with the same river further downstream where it separates El Paso from Ciudad Juarez.

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From the Rio Grande gorge in Nuevo Mexico del norte to the subalpine regions of the Big Bend down to Brownsville, the Rio Grande is quite an interesting river.

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Big Bend National Park:

The flowers in the foreground are bluebonnets.

http://www.depts.ttu.edu/environmentalstudies/big%20bend%20bluebonnets.jpg

The Santa Elena canyon . . .

http://www.aspenleaf.com/eClassroom/images/santa_elena_canyon.jpg

The Park includes ecosystems from sealevel desert . . .

http://www.bjgeiger.com/texas/pictures/t07.jpg

. . . to subalpine forest.

http://www.terraphotography.com/big_bend/bigbend_36.jpg

It is the home of a great many birds, being in a "flyway"--this is the vermillion flycatcher . . .

http://www.jkcassady.com/images/VEFL1.jpg

. . . and this is the notorious road runner,

http://www.jkcassady.com/images/GRRO2.jpg

But many enjoy the Park for it's wildflowers, such as the desert marigold.

http://museum.utep.edu/archive/plants/kodi2.jpg

So, i cannot recommend too highly a visit to . . .

http://nutrisports.org/images_us/BIG%20BEND%20002+Casa%20Grande.jpg

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farmerman wrote:

People in Delaware wonder what all that sand and gravel is in their gardens. Its New York State

All of Connecticut's top soil is on Long Island and a lot of guy's I grew up with in Connecticut make a living with a backhoe and a dump truck digging up Massachusetts and shipping it to New York for fill.

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When people call a river like that, Rio Grande, it kind of tells you what they're used to, doesn't it? And I have seen water in the Rio Grande.

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Yes it does Roger . . . most of the conquistadores came from a province in Spain named Estremadura (sp?), which is very dry, and not at all supplied with rivers on this scale . . .

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I've only seen a bit thus far, this decade. I've been through New Mexico before, but not as an adult.

I don't know a damn thing about rio grande related dams and other artifices, if there are any. Are there?

Very interested and ignern't.

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I don't think the Rio Grande has ever been damed. Could be wrong, but what would be the point?

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From the gorge in Nuevo Mexico del norte all the way down to Big Bend, it's so deep in its banks that there's really no need for flood control. When the snow melt in '82 came down it rose about eight feet at Espanola, and was no where near over its banks. It wouldn't be any good for hydro-electric, because the flow rate is so erratic.

River's up

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