It's Only May And The Rio Grande Is About To Run Dry; Runoff At 1/6 Of Historic Averages

[hatrack]

The Rio Grande South of Socorro, NM.

LEMITAR, N.M. — Mario Rosales, who farms 365 acres along the Rio Grande, knows the river is in bad shape this year. It has already dried to a dusty ribbon of sand in some parts, and most of the water that does flow is diverted to irrigate crops, including Mr. Rosales’s fields of wheat, oats, alfalfa and New Mexico’s beloved chiles.

Because last winter’s mountain snowpack was the second-lowest on record, even that irrigation water may run out at the end of July, three months earlier than usual. But Mr. Rosales isn’t worried. He is sure that the summer thunderstorms, known here as the monsoon, will come. “Sooner or later, we’ll get the water,” he said.

EDIT

With spring runoff about one-sixth of average and more than 90 percent of New Mexico in severe to exceptional drought, conditions here are extreme. Even in wetter years long stretches of the riverbed eventually dry as water is diverted to farmers, but this year the drying began a couple of months earlier than usual. Some people are concerned that it may dry as far as Albuquerque, 75 miles north. A study last year of the Colorado River, which provides water to 40 million people and is far bigger than the Rio Grande, found that flows from 2000 to 2014 were nearly 20 percent below the 20th century average, with about a third of the reduction attributable to human-caused warming. The study suggested that if climate change continued unabated, human-induced warming could eventually reduce Colorado flows by at least an additional one-third this century.

EDIT

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/24/climate/dry-rio-grande.html

[yallerdawg]

1. West Texas to southern California is functionally a desert.

Remember years ago when Sam Kinison used to joke that "We have deserts in America. We don't live in them."

One day soon, U-Haul's for everyone!

I mean, what else can you call it?

[Mountain Mule]

2. It's VERY dry here in the South West!

[itsrobert]

3. It's just God's way of parting the river so people can enter the US

It's God's middle finger to Trump.