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New Mexico's Northern Landscape Gets A New Burst Of Color

Thanks to unusually heavy monsoon rains, mesa land east of Ghost Ranch in New Mexico has erupted into vibrant green life — an unusual sight in this region.
courtesy Harvey Day
Thanks to unusually heavy monsoon rains, mesa land east of Ghost Ranch in New Mexico has erupted into vibrant green life — an unusual sight in this region.

Much of the American West is suffering from extreme drought this year. California is running out of water and wildfires have raged through Washington, Oregon and Idaho. But there is a bright spot out West — or, rather, a green spot. In New Mexico, unusually heavy late-summer rains have transformed the landscape.

It's a remarkable sight. The high desert is normally the color of baked pie crust; now, it's emerald.

Kirt Kempter, a geologist who lives in Santa Fe, says this transformation is far from ordinary.

This is what New Mexico's northern desert <em>normally </em>looks like. Copper Canyon was a sea of burnt reds and browns in December 2013.
John Burnett / NPR
/
NPR
This is what New Mexico's northern desert normally looks like. Copper Canyon was a sea of burnt reds and browns in December 2013.

"We now have this green carpet covering all the mesas, the lowlands," Kempter says. "And we're just not used to seeing a pistachio-green color in the landscape out here. It's very, very unusual."

Kempter takes frequent hikes in the Piedra Lumbre, the valley of shining stone near the town of Abiquiu that captivated the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. In the shade of a pinyon pine, he looks out past 165-million-year-old cliffs of yellow cream and red, onto a positively verdant desert floor.

It's not just the yellow paperflowers, Indian paintbrush, verbena and snakeweed that have exploded. Other living things are thriving, too, Kempter says.

"The insect population is good. I've seen a tremendous surge in the swallow colonies building on the canyon cliffs," he says. "There's good food everywhere. Lots of rabbits out — coyotes then are plump and healthy. So it's just good times in the desert."

This part of the West has suffered through a punishing drought for the past three to four years. All over New Mexico, arroyos are dry. Fearsome windstorms covered everything in dust. Farmers had to pump groundwater for their chile and alfalfa fields, and cattle ranchers were forced to buy expensive hay trucked down from Colorado. The whitewater outfitters have been grumbling about low flows.

After years of drought, New Mexico is now experiencing an unusually high amount of rainfall.
/ AHPS/National Weather Service
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AHPS/National Weather Service
After years of drought, New Mexico is now experiencing an unusually high amount of rainfall.

And then last month, the monsoons arrived, like an answer to a prayer.

Forecasters say the drenching rains are a result of backdoor cold fronts charging down from Colorado, colliding with monsoonal Pacific moisture coming up from the south. The National Weather Service's description of the result — "abundant moisture, slow-moving storms" — is music to the ears of New Mexicans. Every clap of thunder, too, is welcomed.

In the past few weeks, the drought map over New Mexico has turned from the deep-brown of "exceptional drought" to the sandy color of "moderate drought."

No one knows if this means the drought is over, but it has certainly raised widespread hope that the years-long dry spell may finally be easing.

Now, they pray, just bring us a thick winter snowpack.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

As NPR's Southwest correspondent based in Austin, Texas, John Burnett covers immigration, border affairs, Texas news and other national assignments. In 2018, 2019 and again in 2020, he won national Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for continuing coverage of the immigration beat. In 2020, Burnett along with other NPR journalists, were finalists for a duPont-Columbia Award for their coverage of the Trump Administration's Remain in Mexico program. In December 2018, Burnett was invited to participate in a workshop on Refugees, Immigration and Border Security in Western Europe, sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Commission.