First drought, then floods in New Mexico

link doesn't work, BBB..

BBB
This is the complete link:

http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/impacts/hydrology/state_fd/nmwater1.html

Unfortunately, the report is not up to date and does not include the current monsoon season floods.

Thanks...

Yeah, we here in the a-hole 'o are in the same geographical area with Southern New Mexico, and we hadn't had significant rain for a very long time. On the first day of this month through to this week, however, we've had more rain than we usually get on average throughout the year. Heck, we surpassed our yearly average on that first day itself. Meteorologists were saying that the amount of rain we've had occurs here only every five hundred years or so. The areas of town that got hit hardest were the West Side and Central. Those areas are either right on the mountains here, the Franklins, or very close to them. The rains have exposed shortsightedness in the building codes that the city has here, allowing for the building of subdivisions in arroyo areas on the mountains in the West Side of the city. These subdivisions are some of the most exclusive areas of the city. On that first day of this month, however, these areas became raging rivers as the heavy rains drained down from the mountains racing to reach the Rio Grande, which that day gave a hint to the reason the Spanish had called the river, el rio bravo.

On those first two days of this month the river got to a couple of feet of breaching its banks. On the other side of the river our sister city, Ciudad Juárez, in Mexico had a situation in which one of their earthen dams was likely to collapse. The wave that that would have caused would have inundated large areas of our downtown which is on the river, so about a thousand people were evacuated from the neighborhoods there and the areas nearby. The areas on the South Side of the city, the areas near the river, were put on alert for immediate evacuation in the case that the river would breach. Luckily, it didn't.

I live a few miles away from the mountain, on the East Side of town. Here we are generally on high ground which is basically a plateau area that gradually rises as one travels away from the river. There are hills and arroyos here also, but they're not like the ones on and nearer the mountain. We did get some flooding, and most of the collection ponds got very close to their maximum capacity. A few of them filled to beyond their max and created ponds that invaded their surrounding streets.

Yesterday we got more rain, but it wasn't in the amounts that we got those first days of the month. The river rose again due to the amounts of rain that have been coming down from the north, like Hatch, NM, which got pounded with a lot of rain a couple of days ago. From what's being said around here, they're still going to have their Chile Festival this year in September, regardless of the floods. Things should dry up over there by then.

Not a spot of flooding here, and believe me, when the neighbor turns on the sprinkler system, we call it the second deluge.

Roiger
Roger, glad to hear everything is OK in Farmington.

Infrablue, I talked to several old timers who tell me they have never seen rain like we've had the last two months. Parts of New Mexico are really devastated with millions in damage. Even the large cities are suffering because they were not prepared for such heavy rains re their infrastructure.

When I moved to Albuquerque from California in 2002, I discovered that few houses had rain gutters. People told me they were not needed because of the low rainfall. I still had some gutters installed on my house, which has really helped me this year. I also had my rear yard grade changed two years ago to change the water flow direction against my house to go down to the street. People thought I was wasting money on unneeded improvements. These changes have helped to properly drain my property and avoid any water damage.

BBB

We haven't had any flooding in my part yet.

bm

I hope you all escape the worst! Fingers crossed!

(your NM weather patterns sound distinctly Australian!)

BBB


I agree. We've even had terrible forest and range fires. Maybe not as bad as in Oz, but bad enough.

And some say there is no evidence of global warming.

BBB

I knew there'd been bushfires in California, BBB, but wasn't aware that NM had experienced them this summer. Victoria (my home state) has hideous bushfires every single summer, as does much of the SE of Oz.

We have bad fires in New Mexico every year, usually caused by dry lighning strikes in the forest and range lands. Sometimes they are cause by human carelessness. The fires have been especially bad the last few years because of the drought.

You might find the following interesting:
http://walter.arizona.edu/overview/study_areas/jemez_fire_history.asp

Three years ago, the Bosque (forest) only five miles from my home running along both sides of the Rio Grande river was set afire by stupid kids. Terrible damage, loss of property, etc.

BBB

the single most common weather effect in New mexico is virga In meteorology, virga is precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground. At high altitudes the precipitation falls mainly as ice crystals before melting and finally evaporating; this is usually due to compressional heating because the air pressure increases closer to the ground. It is very common in the desert.

Virga can cause very interesting weather effects, because as rain is changed from liquid to vapour form, it removes much heat from the air due to the high heat of vaporization of water. These small pockets of extremely cold air then descend rapidly, creating a microburst which can be extremely hazardous to aviation.

Virga also has a role in seeding storm cells, where light particles from one cloud are blown into neighbouring supersaturated air and act as nucleation particles for the next thunderhead cloud to begin forming.

Virga can produce dramatic and beautiful scenes, especially during a red sunset. The red light can be caught by the streamers of falling precipitation, while aloft winds push the bottom ends of the virga so it falls at an angle, making the clouds appear to have commas attached.

Virga is a Latin word for a branch or twig, and hence for objects made from it, as a broom, a staff, or a rod (hence the English word virge).

It also is an acronym for "Variable Intensity Rain Gradient Aloft", meaning the rain gradient varies in intensity dependent upon altitude. As the precipitation evaporates as it falls, its intensity lessens, hence; virga.

BBB
While lazying about in Dys' back yard, he often points out the virga effect to me. They are beautifully eerie. Diane likes them, too.

I think virgas are the cause of us having hail, sometimes, large, during the hot monsoon season.

BBB

All new to me, re Virga, et al, and learning, but not entirely about fire. Fire in the Santa Monica mountains got to six or eight blocks from our house in '61.
Arson is also not at all new, sadly.

Fire ecology and its discontents... in the let alone fire ecology, things would burn to where they last burned, often in fairly small plots compared to now (I gather). Now we have milliondollar babies cantilevered for views... and the saving of these tweaks that natural system.

I was trained by civll engineers and architects but am more and more for living lightly on the land. Luckily, some of them are now too.

Thanks for that link, BBB. We have a lot more in common than I thought!