NOAA Forecast: Bad Across The West: Low Colorado Flows, Rio Grande Will Dry Up In ABQ By June

[hatrack]

Last edited Tue Mar 25, 2025, 08:18 AM - Edit history (1)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, although battered by Trump administration attempts to impose massive staff and budget cuts on the agency, nevertheless continues to publish critical climate information, including some dire drought warnings in the spring outlook published March 20 by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. The outlook calls for continued dry conditions in the Southwest, where global warming is a key driver of a long-term megadrought that is already disrupting water supplies to cities and nationally important agricultural zones. About 40 percent of the contiguous 48 states are currently in some stage of drought or abnormally dry conditions, and those are expected to persist in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest and Southern Plains, according to the March 20 bulletin.

In the past two weeks, water officials in the West warned that, despite near-average snowpack in some parts of the Colorado River’s mountain watershed, the river’s flows are expected to drop below normal, exacerbating tensions between water users in the region. In New Mexico, water experts said the Rio Grande is likely to dry up completely in Albuquerque as early as June. A 2024 study explained how global warming drives a cycle that leads to measured flows in Western rivers and streams being consistently lower than predictions based solely on snowpack measurements.

Other recent research suggests drought risks in North America have been widely underestimated by major climate reports, as rising global temperatures bake the moisture out of plants and out of the soil itself. Annual cycles of decreasing winter snow followed by extreme heat are pushing “a global transition to flash droughts under climate change,” a 2023 study concluded.

EDIT

Regarding NOAA’s spring outlook, University of Michigan climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck said, “It looks rough for the western half of the country, and especially the Southwest. It’s been really dry this winter, and with temperatures projected to be above normal, and precipitation below normal, it means that the megadrought that has gripped the region since 1999 will intensify.” The outlook is bad news for Colorado River and Rio Grande flows, and for soil moisture and vegetation health across the region. Drying vegetation heightens concerns for another bad wildfire season in the Southwest, he added. “This is what hot drought looks like and what climate change looks like,” he said. “It’s grim and will keep getting worse over years to come if we don’t halt the burning of fossil fuels.”

EDIT/END

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24032025/noaa-critical-drought-warnings-spring-climate-outlook/

[alittlelark]

1. It's been a stunningly dry winter here.

[multigraincracker]

2. Orange groves in the Rust Belt?

[SorellaLaBefana]

3. Perhaps, since likely will be none in Florida much longer (USDA 2024 Report)

Natural disasters, disease cut Florida orange production an estimated 92 percent since 2003/04

...Citrus greening disease leads to premature fruit drop, unripe fruit, and eventual tree death. With no known cure, citrus growers use a variety of management strategies to protect young trees, increase tree immune response, sustain grove health, and improve fruit marketability. While these management strategies can partially offset yield losses, they increase the costs of production. Hurricanes in 2017 and 2022 dealt further damage to Florida’s citrus industry. Since 2003/04, bearing acreage of Florida’s orange trees has declined at an average rate of 3 percent per year. In April 2024, USDA forecast Florida’s orange 2023/24 production at 846,000 tons, 19 percent higher than the previous year but the second-lowest harvest in nearly 90 years...

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=109051

Expect for this, and similar pages, to disappear soon.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. tRump's solution: Shoot the messenger. Defund NOAA and fire forecasters & researchers

He and his henchmen are sure that will change the reality because they say "We make our own reality and while you are writing it down we make more reality."

[Mountain Mule]

5. We are suffering here in SW Colorado

In the Four Corners region we have had the driest winter that I can ever recall. The snow pack up in the San Juans and the La Platas is a sorry excuse when compared to what we normally have. Of course, there is no "normal" and as much as TV Weather hosts want to call this the "new normal," it's more like a speed limit sign that T***p et al ignore as we careen around ever sharper curves as CO2 levels and temperatures rise ever higher.

I live in ranching and farming country and I fear for my neighbors - who all voted for T***p, BTW. There is simply not enough water in the resevoirs to sustain irrigation of their alfalfa and hay crops. We feed a lot of cows today that will be come your hamburger tomorrow. Look for the cost of beef to rise to ever more impossible highs.

Of course this is just a hoax, so no worries. I detest the magats and the republican party.