Rain and Drought

It's dry now, no rain for weeks, but the past summer was the wettest since we moved here. Over 12 inches of rain from earliest May into mid October. And it was spread out in intervals, not all at once. The rain was mostly gentle and soaking, not the typical thunderclap downpours that run off too quickly. 

For reference, a typical summer monsoon season usually delivers about 6 inches of rain for the whole season, and we've had years where it was less than that.

And yet we are still in a long term drought.

There are different kinds of drought measurements, and the one I am most keenly aware of is meteorological drought. That's a measure of soil moisture. Rainfall replenishes soil moisture, down several inches and it is what my garden plants live on. This year has been great.

Hydrological drought is a measure of what's in groundwater and reservoirs, and that is replenished by winter snow, in our case the snowfall up in Colorado and in the Sangre de Cristo mountains at the headwaters of our rivers. 

That's where the problem is. Even though it rained more than twice the average this summer, last winter there was little snowmelt to fill rivers and soak slowly into the ground.

My garden plants live on that too, since I irrigate. Irrigation water comes from city reservoirs and wells and they are still low. A rainy summer with a foot of rain has helped fill rivers and lakes, but not nearly enough.

The 25 year long hydrological drought in New Mexico has been going on since the year 2000 and it is the most sustained in over a thousand years, from what tree rings and ecological studies tell us. And from what neighbors tell us too -- they remember well the snowier and wetter 1980s and 90s.

It's way worse in the western part of the state toward Arizona, not as bad in the eastern plains stretching to the midwest (New Mexico is a very big state). Santa Fe is midway and closer to the northern mountains, so we are in the middle between severe and less dry conditions. 

But too dry. Still. Even with the rainiest wettest summer I've seen.