Here in New Mexico, our growing season has lengthened since the 1970s, even as stream flows have decreased. Fire season starts earlier, lasts longer, and in some years, ignites the forests into record-breaking blazes, like the gargantuan Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon and Black fires in 2022.<\/p>\n
If you look at the last century in New Mexico, stretches of higher temperatures have lengthened; heat waves are hotter and nights, consistently warmer.<\/p>\n
Rising heat and expanding aridity harm ecosystems and wildlife, and hotter days are dangerous for anyone outside, especially people working outdoors or without housing or access to cool spaces. Extreme heat even interacts with certain medications people need for their physical and mental health.<\/p>\n
It should be no surprise that we\u2019re facing another crackly-dry spring, summer, and fall. Fans watching the March 2 Oscars on Albuquerque TV saw flashing red-flag fire warnings. The next day, high winds and dust storms blasted the state; near Deming, a haboob of fast-moving dust shut down highways.<\/p>\n
As of early March, 92% of New Mexico was experiencing drought, with almost 30% of the state in severe to extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.<\/p>\n
Arizona is in even worse shape: 100% of the state is in drought, with 87% in severe to exceptional drought. And the interior West\u2019s three-month outlook is for warm, dry conditions — especially in Arizona and New Mexico.<\/p>\n
Here in New Mexico, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District — which supplies water for farms \u2014 is warning runoff season will be short and river flows, low. The district\u2019s leaders are urging farmers to plan for extended periods between irrigation deliveries and say that without summertime monsoons, they will not meet everyone\u2019s needs this year.<\/p>\n
During the 1900s — including during the infamous 1950s drought and earlier in this century \u2014 farmers could often still expect full water allocations in a dry year.<\/p>\n
Now, when farmers don\u2019t receive water — and the Rio Grande dries for long stretches \u2014 it\u2019s not only because there isn\u2019t enough snow melting off the mountains. It\u2019s also because consistently dry soils suck up any moisture, making both forests and croplands thirstier.<\/p>\n
Not only that, but decades of persistent drought and warming temperatures have desiccated reservoirs along the Rio Grande and its tributary, the Chama River.<\/p>\n
On the Chama River, Heron Reservoir is 14% full; its neighbors, El Vado and Abiquiu, are at 14% and 51%, respectively. Further down the watershed, on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, Elephant Butte Reservoir is only 13 percent full, and its neighbor, Caballo, nine percent full.<\/p>\n
In New Mexico, some water users, including the irrigation district, rely on water piped from the Colorado River watershed into the Chama and then the Rio Grande. This year, most of that supplemental water won\u2019t be there.<\/p>\n
The view upstream on both watersheds is also troubling, especially in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah where the snowpack is \u201cbelow to well-below median.\u201d Last month, the Colorado River\u2019s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, were 34% full, the lowest they\u2019d been in early February for the last 30 years of records.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m alarmed by many things happening right now, including the disappearance of climate data from federal websites and the gutting of federal workforces and budgets. We need wildland firefighters, scientists, and the staffers who keep our parks and public lands functioning.<\/p>\n
But as a reporter who has covered climate change and its impacts in my state for more than two decades, I take the long view along with a local view.<\/p>\n