Above-normal warmth in February and beyond puts snowpack in peril
February shaping up as one of warmest in S.F. in nearly 20 years
February has been warm across New Mexico, with record or near-record temperatures in Santa Fe and other parts of the state. And the three-month forecast by the National Weather Service calls for a good chance of continued abovenormal temperatures, along with below-normal precipitation.
“That’s not really boding well for our snowpack,” Todd Shoemake, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said Wednesday.
Mountain snowpacks remain at or above normal in the river basins of Northern New Mexico. The question is whether warm temperatures and high winds will gobble up much of that snow before the spring runoff season, leaving the region once again high and dry heading into summer and counting on rain to keep crops alive, maintain stream flows and reduce the threat of wildfires.
February is shaping up as one of the warmest in nearly 20 years in Santa Fe. The high was 61 degrees Wednesday, above the average of 51 but short of the record of 66.
Near-record highs were seen Wednesday across Central and Western New Mexico, with record highs anticipated over much of the eastern part of the state for a second day in a row.
Warming temperatures this time of year also mean more wind. High winds were reported across much of the state Wednesday and were expected to grow worse Thursday. New Mexico is also heading into the windiest time of the year.
“That is a snow-eating mechanism,” Shoemake said.
Above-normal temperatures, low humidity and breezy to windy conditions led the National Weather Service to issue a red-flag fire warning for Thursday for all of the eastern part of the state and the lower to middle Rio Grande Valley.
New Mexico could see a replay of last year, in which warm temperatures and high winds severely diminished spring runoff, Shoemake said.
“It does seem these bouts are a lot more frequent in recent years,” he said. “The climate is changing.”
And it isn’t just New Mexico feeling the heat.
reported Wednesday that 2,805 recordhigh temperatures have occurred across the nation this month, compared with just 27 record lows.
Chicago, where flower stems are sprouting, has gone 67 days without receiving an inch of snow, its longest snow drought on record, the Post reported. Ice covers just 8.1 percent of the Great Lakes, compared with normal coverage of about 42 percent, the newspaper said.
Through Tuesday, the average
daily high for February at the Santa Fe Municipal Airport was 57.1 degrees, compared to an average of 49.1 degrees for the month, according to records dating back to 1998, Shoemake said.
“We did have a few cool days” in February, he said. “That is probably skewing it a bit.”
If the trend holds for the rest of the month, as it is expected to do, it will be the second warmest February recorded at the airport.
The high so far this month at the airport was 69 degrees on Feb. 10. On that same day, Albuquerque reached 75, the earliest in a calendar year that it has recorded a 75-degree day since record keeping began in 1892.
Albuquerque is on pace to have one of its top 10 warmest Februarys.
As senior fly-fishing guide at High Desert Angler in Santa Fe, Norman Maktima is monitoring the snowpack and the weather forecast because of the potential impacts on stream conditions in the spring and summer.
Low stream flows and high water temperatures — and the poor conditions they produce for both fish and fisher — can mean shorter days on the water with clients and less guide fees, Maktima said. Also, some streams may be off-limits altogether because of conditions. “It can make it very difficult for our business,” he said.
Last year, the flow on the Pecos River near the village of Pecos never got above 600 cubic feet a second due to the diminished runoff.
“We haven’t seen anything over 1,000 in several years. That used to be a regularity,” he said. “Growing up here, I’ve seen the trend since I was a kid.”
Temperatures across New Mexico were forecast to plunge Thursday due to a cold front, then rebound over the weekend.
Contact Thom Cole at 505-9863022 or tcole@sfnewmexican.com.