Early morning hikers walk over the second bridge at Sabino Canyon on Wednesday. Sabino Creek is running much later than normal this year. Water is usually dried up between April and May.

 Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star

A ribbon of water trickled Wednesday morning through an opening in a rock-walled crossing of Sabino Creek, along the paved road winding through Sabino Canyon.

The water first radiated outward in circular fashion, then came to rest in a large pool, maybe 40 feet long and 20 to 30 feet across. Tiny minnows circled around just under the surface; all appeared to be endangered Gila chub, says retired federal fish biologist Jeff Simms.  

Upstream of the crossing, the creek formed a smaller pool. White-wing doves cooed their usual "Who cooks for you?" call, as a breeze wafted through the branches of cottonwood and willow trees towering along both sides of the water.

The sight of water running in the creek at all in early June or even late May startled Janet Marcotte. She has lived near and regularly walked the canyon for 32 years. Marcotte has no recollection of seeing any water at the creek's first bridge, lying about 500 feet upstream of the crossing, this late in Tucson's normally dry spring except for this year and last year.

Typically, the creek is at its driest in late spring, when Tucson normally has its driest weather, in between its winter rains and summer monsoons.

This year's rainfall, however, is running nearly 30% above normal, putting more water than normal into not only Sabino Creek but several others, including the Rillito River, Tanque Verde Creek and Bear Creek, a tributary to Sabino Creek, federal records show.

Janet Marcotte takes a photo of the scenery while on one of her early morning walks through Sabino Canyon this week. Marcotte has been walking Sabino Canyon for 32 years and observes the changes in water in the creek and near the bridges. She says the water is usually dried up between April and May, and that this is one of the latest times of year she’s seen water.

Last year's rainfall was well below normal. But rainfall just in December 2022 was almost one-third of an inch above normal, giving a head start to this year's flows in Tucson's seasonal watercourses.

Continuous 100-day flows

Besides the findings of official, federal stream gauges, volunteers for a nonprofit group who monitor many Tucson-area streams saw continuous flow for at least 100 days this year in three — the Rillito, Bear Creek and Aqua Caliente Creek.

The flows were recorded for the Watershed Management Group, which has long advocated for preserving and enhancing stream flows and for reducing groundwater pumping to allow streams to flow more often.

The continuous 100-day flows have never happened before on those three creeks during the group's eight years of monitoring, said Laura Monheim, manager of the group's River Run Network. "It's definitely a record," she said. "It's really incredible, really impressive, for sure."

"Running water always makes it wonderful; just to have it so much longer in the year is fantastic," said Marcotte, a retired executive director of the YWCA of Southern Arizona.

Her observations are backed up by formal statistics, recorded in a U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge located about 40 feet above Sabino Dam, a rock structure a few hundred yards downstream of the paved Sabino Canyon Road.

Water is seen near bridge two in Sabino Canyon on June 7. Sabino Creek is running much later than normal this year. Water is usually dried up between April and May.

This year, average monthly flows at the gauge have exceeded the monthly averages covering the period 1991 through 2022 for every month except April. Sabino also ran continuously for an extended period both this and last year, from July 27, 2022 until June 1 at the U.S.G.S. stream gauge site.

Looking farther back, this year's average monthly flows were less than those averaged over 35 years, from 1987 through 2022. But that's most likely because many years in the 1980s and 1990s were much wetter than most years have been since the Southwest's long-term drought started around 2000.

Because it's drier now than it was 25 or 30 years ago, the creek's average date for drying up was June 3 from 2015 through 2022, compared to a longer-term average drying date of June 23, said Kurt Ehrenberg, U.S.G.S.'s Tucson field office chief.

'It's been flowing without stop'

This year's Sabino flows also stand in marked contrast from those of 2020, Tucson's driest year on record.

That year, the creek ran dry 216 days, including 136 straight dry days from late summer through the fall, the federal agency's records show. That was the longest consecutive stretch of dry days since the U.S.G.S. started keeping records at Sabino in the 1980s.

But looking at this year's flows, Marcotte said she had been struck by the strength of the creek's flow during the last week of May because "I could hear it just as I dipped into the canyon ... a mile before I even got to the first bridge.

"By early August 2022, there was so much water, the bridges were not safe to cross and it’s been flowing without stop at least since then," said Marcotte, who today walks the canyon three days a week. "When I went there first week of April of 2023, it was the first time this year I didn’t have to wade in water all over the bridges."

On Tanque Verde Creek, water ran continuously at its U.S.G.S. stream gauge near Sabino Canyon Road from Dec. 31, 2022, through April 15 of this year.

Its monthly average flows at the gauge were higher than their 21st-century averages in January, February and March, the only months this year for which such data is yet available. Its January 2023 flow was the highest flow for that month on the creek since the start of the 21st century, U.S.G.S. records show. March 2023 saw the third-highest March flow on record in this century, and the February 2023 flow was the sixth-highest for that month.

At U.S.G.S.' Rillito River gaging station at Dodge Road, the January 2023 flow was by far its highest for January this century. The February flow, the only other one for 2023 for which data is available, was also above normal and was its fifth-highest flow since 2000. The Rillito flowed continuously from Jan. 1 through Jan. 27 and from Feb. 22 until March 26.

Upstream at Craycroft Road, where the Pantano Wash and Tanque Verde Creek merge to form the Rillito, the river ran continuously for 107 days until drying on April 18, Monheim said. That's "the most we've ever seen" in eight years of monitoring on the Rillito, she said.

Early morning hikers walk over the first bridge at Sabino Canyon as water still runs through on June 7. Sabino Creek is running much later than normal this year. Water is usually dried up between April and May.

At the group's informal monitoring spot at the Bear Creek trailhead near Sabino Creek, water was running down Bear Creek for 120 consecutive days before it dried up on May 3. Aqua Caliente Creek at Milagrosa Lane ran 100 days before drying on April 11, Monheim said.

Where the group monitors Tanque Verde Creek at Wentworth Road, it's flowed continuously for 153 days from Jan. 4  through Wednesday, June 7, said Monheim, adding, "We're hopeful that we can see it all the way into the monsoons. That would be cool."

Watershed Management Group has 70 volunteers who collect river flow data annually at 40 spots across the Tucson area, she said.

"This water year, I would definitely describe it as encouraging. I think it’s definitely due to the awesome winter rains we had this year that we had this much flow," Monheim said.

Take a look at these three mountain lions roaming through an area southwest of Sabino Canyon earlier this week! Wildlife officials think the video shows a female with two offspring. They likely returned to the Sabino Canyon area afterwards. Video courtesy of Arizona Game and Fish Department

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Reporter Tony Davis covers the environment for the Arizona Daily Star. Contact him at 520-349-0350 or tdavis@tucson.com. Follow Davis on Twitter@tonydavis987.