From Deep Freeze To Record Drought

From a deep freeze unprecedented in nearly four decades to a drought unprecedented in the past century to a similarly unprecedented fire season, 2011 was a year for the record books.

At its worst, 2011 left 79 percent of New Mexico in extreme drought or worse.

But it was really the long warm period, the brief extreme cold spell and the dryness that told the year’s weather story.

At this time a year ago, after some wet December weather, none of the state was in severe drought, according to weekly records from the National Drought Mitigation Center.

But that began changing in January as the storm track abandoned New Mexico, carrying winter weather to our north, said Ed Polasko, who monitors drought and water supply for the National Weather Service’s Albuquerque office.

Drought takes some time to wrap its dry fingers around its prey, and Polasko said it took a few months for the ground moistened by December 2010 storms to dry out. During the winter, much of the plant life across the landscape is dormant, so it is only with the warming of spring that the lack of precipitation begins to show.

But before that could happen, nature offered a February wallop that New Mexicans will not soon forget.

It happened when a deeply dipping jet stream essentially swapped air masses between the Arctic and the more temperate parts of North America.

“We’re getting what they’re supposed to be getting, and they’re getting what we’re supposed to be getting,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Guyer said at the time. Some parts of the state felt the coldest weather since 1971, others the coldest since 1990. In some New Mexico communities, the storm of February 2011 went down in the record books as the lowest temperatures ever recorded.

Albuquerque’s low of minus 7 degrees on Feb. 2 made it one of the dozen or so coldest days in the city’s history. As the cold hung around, power outages in Texas limited deliveries of natural gas to New Mexico, setting off a chain of dominoes that eventually left some 32,000 homes and businesses in the state enduring the epic cold with no natural gas for heating.

And yet how quickly things turn around. By Feb. 16, just two weeks later, Albuquerque set a record with a daytime high of 70.

That second milestone was more representative of the year as a whole. Befitting a year that was 1.8 degrees warmer than the long-term average through the end of November, 2011 saw more records for high temperatures than for low ones.

In Albuquerque, the city with the oldest reliable weather records, 22 records were set for high temperatures and only five for low temperatures, according to the National Weather Service. Roswell, another spot with a long weather record, set 20 high temperature records and just three low temperature records.

It was that warmth, accompanied by a record dry spell, that set the stage for an unprecedented fire season.

The state was already blanketed by smoke from the Wallow Fire in Arizona in late June when a tree fell on a power line in the little hamlet of Las Conchas in the Jemez Mountains, sparking what became the largest New Mexico wildfire ever recorded, destroying 63 homes, forcing the evacuation of Los Alamos and burning 156,593 acres before it was finally brought under control.

With Las Conchas and the Donaldson Fire in southern New Mexico, 2011′s hot, dry weather brought the state’s two largest fires since firefighting and record-keeping began a century ago, according to records kept by the National Interagency Fire Center.

By the end of September — the end of what meteorologists and water managers call the “water year” because it includes the previous winter snow season followed by spring and summer water usage — New Mexico completed its second-driest year on record, with a statewide average of 7.77 inches of precipitation. Only 1956, in the depths of the drought of the ’50s, was drier.

The weather caused ranchers to sell off herds because of the poor condition of rangeland grass and the high cost of alfalfa. In southern New Mexico, the combination of drought and a dispute over allocation of Rio Grande water left farmers with little irrigation supply.

Nature finally relented with a wetter fall, but it was not until a wave of five storms hit in December that New Mexico saw anything approaching drought relief. By last Thursday, just 23 percent of New Mexico was in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, according to the federal Drought Monitor, down from the summer peak of 79 percent.

“It’s not as bad as it used to be,” Polasko said, “but don’t get carried away yet.” That is because, despite the good fortune of winter weather that drenched the state in December, the long-term forecast calls for drier conditions and a risk that drought could swell again come spring 2012. “Spring is normally dry and windy around here,” Polasko cautioned.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal