There is no way to sugar coat the bad water news pill as 2026 enters what should be the rising limb of the runoff season, as Rin Tara and John Fleck report in this week's water update.

Consider: 

• Flow at Embudo, on the Rio Grande upstream from Española, is at its second lowest level for this point in the year in a record that, with a few gaps in the record in the early 20th century, goes back to the late 1800s. 
• Flow at the the USGS Albuquerque gage is the lowest it has been at this point in the year in half a century. 
• With the snowpack in the Rio Grande headwaters nearly melted out, the Rio Grande flowing out of the mountains at Del Norte in Colorado may already have peaked. It doesn't usually peak until June. 
• Flow on the Gila in Southern New Mexico is the lowest it has been at this point in the year since record keeping began in 1928.

And yet... Rin went hiking over the weekend in the Gila and saw Painted Redstarts and a whole lot more, and John rode his bike down to Albuquerque bosque (a map to Albuquerque's delightful "Glass Garden here), where the cottonwoods are greening up. Both rivers - the Gila and the Rio Grande - were low but still lovely.