Yesterday, the Middle Rio Grande was cooking through Albuquerque. Here’s the view just upstream of River Mile 190.
It’s just an iPhone video, but you can notice a few things:
1) The river flowing at about 2,000 cfs.
2) Dead vegetation along the banks and beyond. These aren’t frost-brown bushes and trees. They’re trees and bushes (including, yes, a lot of invasive species) that died when this stretch of the river was dry over the summer. Beyond the bank-armoring Russian olives and others, you can see some cottonwoods — which took a huge hit this year.
3) Sandhill cranes flying into the valley. Typically this time of year there are sandbars just upstream and downstream of here where the birds roost for the night. Those are underwater right now, so the cranes were pulling up and heading someplace else for the night. (I’m guessing the sandbars will emerge soon.)
At any rate, that’s the report from yesterday. I love a noisy river. It’s nice to have the sandhill cranes back in the valley, as well as the wood ducks and the crow mobs.
