Okay, so I got curious about how much rain we actually got here in Albuquerque during 2023. Seemed like a weird year, weather-wise, you know? Some dry spells, then suddenly a downpour. I wanted to keep track for myself, just to see how it added up.
Getting Started
First thing I did was just hop online. Typed in something simple like “albuquerque rainfall 2023” or maybe “how much rain ABQ this year”. You get a bunch of results, obviously. Some news sites popped up, reporting on specific storms, which was okay but not what I wanted. I needed the running total, the year-to-date thing.
Found a couple of weather websites. Some looked real fancy, lots of charts and maps. Honestly, a bit much for me. Others were simpler. The tricky part was finding a consistent number. One site would say one thing, another would be slightly different. Maybe they measure at different spots? Airport versus somewhere else? Who knows. It was a bit annoying at first.
Finding My Go-To Spot
After poking around for a bit, I settled on checking the National Weather Service page. Seemed official enough, right? They usually have the climate data summaries. It wasn’t always the easiest to navigate, gotta admit. Sometimes you gotta click through a few menus to find the daily or monthly summaries. But once I found the right section, it seemed pretty reliable.
I didn’t get too complicated with tracking it. No fancy spreadsheets or anything. I’m not that organized, haha. Mostly, I just made a mental note or sometimes jotted it down on a calendar I keep on the fridge. Usually, I’d try and remember to check it maybe once a week or after a big rain.
The Actual Process – Keeping Tabs
So, my routine, if you can call it that, was basically this: finish my coffee, maybe scroll the news headlines, then remember, “Oh yeah, the rain totals.” I’d pull up the NWS site on my tablet. Look for the monthly climate report or the daily stats. They usually have a “Year-to-Date” precipitation number. That was the main thing I looked for.
- Check the total rainfall so far.
- See how it compared to the “normal” amount for that date. They usually list that too.
- Sometimes I’d look at the monthly total if it was near the end of the month.
It wasn’t super scientific. Sometimes I’d forget for a couple of weeks, then check again. But doing it fairly regularly gave me a decent feel for how the year was stacking up.
What I Noticed
It helped make sense of things. Like when my backyard plants were struggling, I could check the numbers and see, “Yep, we’re way below average for the last month.” Or when the arroyos were running like crazy after a storm, seeing the actual inches reported kind of put it in perspective. It wasn’t just guessing anymore; I had a number to connect it to.
Honestly, just paying attention to it made me notice the weather patterns more. You start to get a better sense of what a “normal” amount of rain feels like versus a really dry spell or a super wet period. It was kinda interesting, just for my own understanding of the place we live.
So yeah, that was my little project for 2023. Just finding a reliable source and checking in now and then. Nothing fancy, but it satisfied my curiosity about all the rain (or lack thereof) we got.
