Albuquerque hits record 64 degrees on Christmas

Sam Isom and his young son spent Thursday afternoon at North Domingo Baca’s dog park, watching their three pups play with about a dozen others on an “extremely warm” day.

Coats at home, Isom and his son were enjoying a rare Albuquerque Christmas — one that would go down in the record books.

“This year’s been a strange year,” Isom said.

Albuquerque on Thursday reached a record-high 64 degrees, beating out the 63-degree mark set in 1955, the National Weather Service of Albuquerque said.

Across the state, warm temperatures have overtaken the cold — and sometimes snowy — weather associated with the Yuletide.

Roswell hit 80 degrees on Christmas, eclipsing the previous high of 74 degrees in 2008, while Albuquerque saw a record-warm Christmas morning of 47 degrees, eight degrees above the 1959 mark.

Fiver other towns, including Farmington at 61 degrees, also set new record-high temperatures for Christmas Day, according to NWS Albuquerque.

The warm Christmas, NWS Albuquerque Meteorologist Nico Porcelli said, is the result of winter systems “tracking much farther north,” creating “these ridges of high pressure over the Southwest.”

“And that’s keeping temperatures warm and conditions dry,” he said. “It is pretty anomalous to see temperatures this… high up, like 20 degrees, 25 degrees above average for this time of year. It’s definitely not common.”

Either way, about 2,000 skiers on Thursday flocked to Ski Santa Fe, General Manager Ben Abruzzo said.

The resort hasn’t seen much snowfall since its opening in late November, but thanks to man-made snow, it had an 18-inch base on Thursday — and about 27 of its 90 trails, including the main Gayway, were open.

“The warmth is a little uncommon,” Abruzzo said, but “it's not all that uncommon for us not to have a whole lot of snow in November, in December. I would say one out of every four years is probably like this.”

But the high temperatures are about to dip.

On Sunday, New Mexico’s northern mountains, including the Sangre de Cristos, where Ski Santa Fe is located, could see about an inch or less of snowfall, Porcelli said.

That snowfall also coincides with cooler temperatures that could blanket much of New Mexico starting this weekend, the result of an eastward-moving storm system in California, Porcelli said.

Albuquerque overnight Sunday could see lows in the low 20s, Porcelli said, with a high in the mid-40s on Monday.