Stephen Von Worley

New Mexico thunderstorm season is known locally as the summer monsoon. On average, Albuquerque receives nine inches of rain a year, but an August cloudburst might dump half that in a few hours.

To gracefully route the runoff, Albuquerque is laced with a network of concrete drainage apparatus: dams, ditches, culverts, and sewers.

Refrigerator-sized teeth line the spillways of the larger dams, intended to slow any overflow to avoid downstream damage. Silently, they stand, an army of evenly-spaced warriors, ready to do battle with a 500-year flood.

Part of the Functionally Structural series.