Five storms later, New Mexico is drying out.
“We’re going to have a quiet week, a quiet rest of the year,” said National Weather Service forecaster Chuck Jones on Tuesday afternoon during a briefing for state emergency managers.
A steady storm track locked in over New Mexico since the first week of December has left much of the state blanketed in snow and kept Jones and his colleagues busy. But short- and medium-term forecasts suggest the state will be drying out and warming up at least through the weekend, and possibly well into January.
The snow cover will slow this week’s warming trend a bit, according to weather service forecaster Deirdre Kann, but given drought conditions, that is a relief. “Most everyone is kind of happy to have snow there on the ground,” Kann said.
Temperatures in Albuquerque should reach the 50s by this weekend.
Joel Jordan of Sunnyvale, Calif., enjoyed the warming weather and the view from the Sandias on Tuesday as sunshine pushed out a month of storms. (pat vasquez-cunningham)
The round of winter weather, five storms in all, has improved drought conditions in the state, according to weather service hydrologist Ed Polasko.
Much of the state remains in drought, but conditions have substantially improved, Polasko said Tuesday. During the summer, more than three quarters of the state was in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, but the latest round of storms has reduced that to 38 percent of New Mexico in extreme drought or worse, according to the weekly federal Drought Monitor.
The snow was especially welcome in the mountains, where, in addition to enabling holiday ski trips, it beefed up the early storage account for next year’s water supply. Winter mountain snows provide much of the state’s surface water supply as it melts off in the spring and summer.
On the Pecos River, hit particularly hard by this year’s drought, headwaters snow gauges registered 30 percent above normal, with all the state’s snow basins above average. Snowpack on the Mimbres River in southwest New Mexico is nearly triple its normal levels for late December, and the nearby Gila River watershed is 72 percent above normal, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which maintains a network of snow measurement gauges in the mountains.
The December storm track especially favored southern New Mexico, with less snow to the north. On the San Juan River above Navajo Dam, for example, the snowpack is 8 percent below normal.
The change in weather is coming as the storm track shifts to the north, with Seattle and the Oregon coast forecast to see as much as 8 inches of precipitation this week. Most of the southern tier of states, from California all the way to Alabama, is forecast to be dry.
In Albuquerque, today’s temperature was forecast to reach the mid-40s, rising into the 50s by the weekend, according to the weather service.
— This article appeared on page A2 of the Albuquerque Journal
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