HikeArizona.COM

The endless chatter of weather.

Or the Mojave. I just spent 4 days in the Mojave. So nice!

California and much of the west is in a drought, but Colorado did very well this winter and aside from the San Juan and Rio Grande basins, is well above normal.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/bou/hydr ... 033114.pdf

Now, they have "concerns" over flood potential, and things like high ground water, and saturated soils from the wet 2013 monsoon and the heavy tropical September rains. Kind of makes me want to roll my eyes, they are never happy. It's either too dry, or too wet. Well, pick one and enjoy it! Well, OK, floods are bad, especially when humans built all sorts of things in places they probably ought not be, but still, at least they'll have plenty of water, and Lake Powell will probably come up.

More snow is forecast for the Rockies today and tonight. But, hey, these storms also passed through California and deposited some snow, so maybe my peaches and almonds won't be so pricey this year. Probably will be. By comparison, the Sierra Snowpack for the 3 regions; north, central, and south, is running at 25%, 39%, and 32%, of the April 1st Average. The last week brought some beneficial snow and rain, but only the central region of the Sierra is now above the "record dry" year of 1977. Though 25% might be bad, there is actually more water in the northern Sierra than the southern, simply because the northern part of the range typically gets more precip than the south part, despite the southern part being higher, and more impressive and more rugged.

This concludes my morning coffee drinking and musing.

Couple of nice rain showers passing through. Nothing substantial, but still nice for the 10% chance to deliver for once.

Went to bed to clear skies and lots of stars doubting the forecast. Woke up to 6 inches of snow for the drive to the airport with sideways snow..
Biggest storm this year with 12" before it cleared up.

Cold this morning in the Golden Land. 40 degrees out there! Brr! I'll have to find my snowsuit! Glad my RV has a good furnace! There is a warming trend on the way, however. 70's for the weekend, 80's next week! Yes! But we needed the rain we had over the past several days.

Raining today on Kauai (imagine that...)

@paulhubbard Total bummer.

@paulhubbard
Uh oh. Kat's got competition. Married to HAZ, even when you're on vacation... ;)
Hope you have an awesome trip!

because I don't ever check haz when I'm on vacation.

http://www.weatherwest.com/
Early predictions and speculation are just that, and who doesn't enjoy speculation? The good people at the California Weather blog, talk first about the end of the sad and very dry 2013-2014 winter season in California, but go on to say that a strong El Nino appears to be forming in the Pacific, and one sentence mentions atmospheric conditions appear to be changing, as well.

A strong, wet winter next year would be great, for CA, AZ, NM, and the southern half of CO (the northern 2/3 of CO has been wet this year), but if it is like 2009, a dry 2014 monsoon is concerning for us. Well, we'll see.

A little off-topic Jim H, but interesting and related to recent bleak drought outlooks for S.W. Its a list of ten most endangered river systems per a recent article, the one silver lining is there are no rivers in AZ on list, but the Upper Colorado, the Gila in N.M. and California's two rivers on list cant be good for the bigger picture and S.W. in general. I wonder if this means AZ handles/manages what few rivers it has well in comparison to her neighboring states??

American Rivers highlighted nine other endangered rivers in its report, as well. Threats range from excessive diversions to outdated dams to polluted runoff. The full list is:

1. San Joaquin River, California

2. Upper Colorado River, Colorado

3. Middle Mississippi River, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky

4. Gila River, New Mexico

5. San Francisquito Creek, California

6. South Fork Edisto River, South Carolina

7. White River, Colorado

8. White River, Washington

9. Haw River, North Carolina

10. Clearwater and Lochsa rivers, Idaho

Doesn't the Gila flow into Arizona?

kingsnake wrote:Doesn't the Gila flow into Arizona?

Only if NM doesn't slurp it all up.

@kingsnake
I was kind of wondering the same thing, and then wouldn't the headwaters also be in N.M....so if that section is in trouble, why are we not in trouble?

@friendofThundergod
AZ Republic this morning reported it was the Gila in Az

I swear it said Gila NM in the local rag ...

The Gila has had problems since Safford was settled in the 1880's. Before that time the Maricopa and Pima Indians farmed something like 15,000 acres, mostly along the Gila. They built a huge network of canals. They were known, (in the extremely prejudiced view of the day) as "good Indians" because they were good farmers, and sold what they produced to immigrants on the stage line, and adapted to newer farming techniques. Then Safford was settled, and also the Salt River Valley, using their water upstream, and not leaving any for them to farm. They resorted to cutting the then-vast groves of mesquite for firewood to sell, which in turn took away one of their food sources, mesquite pods. Then they had to start relying on the Indian Agent to give them food. The food the Indian agent gave them led them on the long road to becoming the ethnic group with the highest rate of diabetes in the US (maybe in the world) because they were not genetically programmed to eat white flower, white sugar and pinto beans. They became known as lazy Indians, all because people in Safford took their water. Later on, Coolidge Dam was built on the Gila by the BIA to try to conserve some water to send downstream to them, with very mixed results.

I think the article considered the Gila River in NM threatened due to a hair brained idea floating around the Las Cruces area to diver water from the upper Gila near Silver City and canal it to the diminished supplies of the Rio Grande in the Mesilla Valley. Those Pecans are a high dollar crop, and need cheap water.

Jim_H wrote:I think the article considered the Gila River in NM threatened due to a hare-brained idea floating around the Las Cruces area to divert water from the upper Gila near Silver City and canal it to the diminished supplies of the Rio Grande in the Mesilla Valley. Those Pecans are a high dollar crop, and need cheap water.

Jim, this brings up a couple of questions:
1. Why is the Rio Grande (which people in the Mesilla Valley have recently renamed the "Rio Sand") not on the list of endangered rivers?
2. Why is the Rio Grande so dry lately? Its source is mostly the San Juan Mountains, correct? Have the southern Rockies had significantly less snow the past 10 years, or is the water usage much higher now? Or both? Do the cities upstream from Las Cruces, such as Albuquerque, use the water for drinking, or is it only used for irrigation?

Oh, here is interesting Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Grande
Turns out there are major tributaries downriver from the Mesilla Valley, which replenish the river, and supply water for agriculture in Texas and Mexico.

The western slopes of the Sangre De Cristos, the small mountains on the west side of the upper Rio Grande in NM, but east of the continental divide, and the San Juans east of the divide, are the main tributaries for the Rio Grande up to the Messilla Valley. while some small washes from the plains and sky islands flow from time to time, there is very little contribution to the flow south of Albuquerque, probably not much a little south of Santa Fe. Last summer, during our heavy monsoon, I observed muddy water, or maybe watery sand, moving down a normally dry wash coming out of the mountains west of the section of I-25 between Belen and Socorro, NM. I think they are the Ladrone Mountains, but there is at least a Ladrone Peak. I remember the rio being nearly dry at the bridge for US 380, up until later July, and it is always dry in Las Cruces. I don't think it can be a threatened rive, since all the damage is done. The dams have been in placed for a century, and it has been over-allocated for about as long.

The Gila still flows freely from it's headwaters to the Coolidge Dam, as far as i know. There is probably a small diversion structure near Silver City, but not much more.

It has been dry in NM, hydrologically speaking, since the summer or fall of 2010(?), but certainly the winter of 2010-2011, just like in SE AZ. The conditions of the last 4 winters have been very dry. An El Nino would probably be nice and wet and bolster flows next year. A strong wet one, anyway.

Check out the old thyme gun aimed at Canada!