John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 02/07/2026Currently 85 miles of river drying on New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande. a) That's a lot. b) We literally pay people to go out and look at the river every quarter of a mile (? I think this is the right spacing. ?) to see if the river is dry. What a weird job. 2112
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 02/01/2026I’m not an animal expert, but I’m pretty sure these aren’t dogs. 0265
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 20/10/2025Tracking the slow return of ducks to the University of New Mexico duck pond after more than a year of remodeling. It’s been two months since completion. Spotted three ducks on Sunday. It’s soon time for the winter wigeons’ return. Will they find their way back? #urbanecosystems 3231
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/01/2025Is cottage cheese the magic elixir of which the wise one speaks? 3181
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 08/01/2025Signed us up today to provide recurring monthly financial support for the Internet Archive. Public goods are underprovided. 010
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 23/12/2024The Rio Grande, from yesterday’s bike ride. Bridges (and other crossings, ferries and fords) are often a community’s first collective action in its evolving relationship with its river. 1100
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 23/12/2024Working on a piece about Ed Ruscha, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and my fascination with signs, I found this favorite: 160
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 21/12/2024New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley, dressed for the start of winter. 1140
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 21/12/2024Now I want to make an animated musical with a band of dancing wire cutters fighting for justice. 271
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/12/2024Yesterday morning they bumped the flow up from 75 cfs to 200. This morning it’s up to 400. Fingers crossed it’s working. (4/n) 130
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 17/12/2024It’s that time of year when I’m looking for a storm a week to build a snowpack. More is better. Zero is not better. 0142
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 16/12/2024It’s got separate bike paths like this threaded all through the neighborhood, and little bollard-blocked ped-bike cut through at the end of cul-de-sacs. 110
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 14/12/2024Guy seemed puzzled by my presence. Guess I looked lost – old guy on a bike on a road that dead ends in a junk yard? He wasn’t fazed by my explanation: “I’m trying to ride on every road in Albuquerque, and I haven’t ridden on this one yet.” His neighbor has 75,000 hub caps. This is why I ride. 0432
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 03/08/2024The “plate of food with a bike helmet” is my favorite genre of Strava photo. 190
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 15/07/2024The Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dropping fast. This is from yesterday’s bike ride. New graffiti on the bridge pilings. Bespoke hydrology content! 192
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/06/2024Here is me wearing the socks at the Water Education Foundation’s 2022 Colorado River symposium. My performance as moderator received mixed reviews, but the socks were a big hit. 091
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/06/2024I am completely normal in every possible way, where by “normal” we mean “has a tremendous collection of rainbow unicorn socks that he wears to all important speaking engagements.” 2160
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024Meeting in Socorro yesterday at 11 a.m., went early with a bike. Rio Grande levee roads are wonderful corridors through our valley - riverside woods on one side, drains, canals, farms on the other. Rode downriver on the levee, then back on the ditchbank roads along the edge of the farmlands. 020
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024More preparations for spring - goats trimming the stubble. Function, and also the goats are super cute. On Rio Grande bottomlands on the eastern edge of Socorro, New Mexico, between the town and the river. #nmwater 110
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024Downriver, past Socorro, work clearing sediment from one of the irrigation canals. The Rio Grande is a very dirty river. "La limpia" - the annual ditch cleanout - is done by heavy equipment operators now. #nmwater 110
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024Crews were out Saturday hustling to finish the concrete lining of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District's Socorro Main canal, just downstream from San Acacia diversion dam. Hurry! Hurry! Irrigation season is about to start! #nmwater 120
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/02/2024The Colorado River year to date is already not great - Colorado Basin River Forecast Center current projection (note big confidence interval!) sez ~1 million acre feet below average: (2/n) 100
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/02/2024The next four weeks don’t look great for the Colorado River’s snow-making (and therefore river flow-making) high country in Colorado (and Utah and Wyoming). Source: www.drought.gov/data-maps-to... (1/n) 111
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 09/02/2024Trying to learn how to use this tool, which estimates short time scale evolution of drought conditions. Pacific Northwest: bad. #ColoradoRiver Basin - less joy than I thought given the current wet. www.drought.gov/data-maps-to... 010
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 05/02/2024“The secret corridor proves an amazing fast shortcut to any explorer determined to brush aside low-hanging branches and to risk broken glass and rusted wire…. [I]t makes clear the stealth with which change comes.” - John Stilgoe, from his book “Outside Lies Magic” 020
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/01/2024There’s a great 1943 picture by Jack Delano taken from nearly the same spot that I love! www.loc.gov/pictures/ite... 030
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 29/12/2023Total annual flow on the #RioGrande at Otowi (key measurement point for New Mexico flow) was high in 2023, but only the fifth time in the 21st century above the period of record mean, going back more than a century. (Working on year-in-review post.) 010
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023and glorious ditches. It was cold on the morning bike ride, if you look closely you can see a thin film of fog/steam floating above the surface of the water. #RibbonsOfGreen 010
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023Used to be a big dairy farm. This part of the valley, just south of downtown, was the old stockyards and meat processing plants. It’s a weird mix now - rich horse farms…. #RibbonsOfGreen 110
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023Early light at Valle do Oro (one of?) the nation’s first/only urban wildlife refuges. Along the Rio Grande, Albuquerque. The white bits in the mid-distance are the petroleum tank farms, to fuel our cars. #RibbonsOfGreen 120
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 17/12/2023Looking north through Machine Shop, Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad, Albuquerque Shops, 908 Second Street, Southwest, Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, NM, Jet Lowe, 2005: www.loc.gov/pictures/ite... 000
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 15/12/2023Working on a piece (“essay”? “blog post”?) about graffiti (“wall art”?) along urban waterways. Here’s Rio Santa Fe (NM) near the old plaza. Tourists walking the river trail can’t see the graffiti, which lines the north side of the river channel and its tributaries in this part of town. 151
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/12/2023Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico’s largest, is up 200,000 acre feet over a year ago. But that’s very low bar to clear, and isn’t a lot given the huge snowpack and runoff on the Rio Grande in 2023. #nmwater 000
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 28/08/2023I spent a couple of days last week in the San Juan River headwaters of southern Colorado, touring forest restoration work on the watersheds from which my community of Albuquerque gets its water. (1/n) 120
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 26/08/2023Also seen on the early morning bike ride - Damian and Lola are an item. Maybe? And some back and forth re Berlynn: 020
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 26/08/2023Rio Grande’s on the brink of drying through Albuquerque, but last night’s rain brought us a day or two reprieve 122
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 26/08/2023The Posole Platform wishes you a good morning as well, and is happy to join you in the rectangle. 010
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 25/08/2023A third of downtown Albuquerque is devoted to car storage: parkingreform.org/resources/pa... 071
John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 19/08/2023E-bikes - a use case: Long, hard week. Feeling, tired. But w/ a bit of pedal-assist, the childlike joy of random exploration: stopped by a cop (does “police chaplain” count as “cop”?), passed by a dude on an e-skateboard, ended up at the horse track, watching the easy trot of the morning workouts. 021