Sunny skies expected as rain retreats
The rumbling thunder and downpour Monday will likely be as fleeting as a cloud formation and don’t foreshadow the weather Santa Feans can expect this week or in October.
The Monday showers are likely the last significant rain the area will receive this week.
Instead, sunny skies and cooler-than-average temperatures will dominate in much of New Mexico into the weekend, forecasters said during a weekly briefing Monday.
“Looking forward, it should be a nice and quiet week,” said Matt DeMaria, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. “Temperature-wise, we’re going to be finally cooling off to nearing a little below average, so more seasonal, early fall weather that you would expect.”
On Monday, the weather service issued flash flood warnings for much of the eastern part the state, including the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon burn scar area. Those were expected to be lifted by Tuesday.
Tuesday night, the high valleys will turn cold, possibly bringing the first freezing temperatures of the season to Taos and Española, DeMaria said.
Scattered thunderstorms in the past several days — with the much-welcome rain dousing some areas — were not enough to reverse the dry spell, meteorologist Andrew Mangham said.
“We have had rounds of rain coming fast and hard, but we’ve not got a lot of improvement in the drought conditions,” Mangham said.
In fact, large sections of the state are slipping into more intense drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a dramatic change from just a few months ago, when more than half the state had zero drought and 44% was abnormally dry, the lowest drought reading.
Now more than 60% of New Mexico is in severe or extreme drought, and 7% is in exceptional drought.
Roughly 75% of Santa Fe County is in moderate drought and 25% is immersed in severe drought, the monitor shows. And relatively dry weather lies ahead for the next couple months, Mangham said.
Contrary to earlier forecasts of a wetter-than-normal October tied to the El Niño weather pattern, the Climate Prediction Center foresees above-average temperatures and near-normal precipitation for New Mexico, DeMaria said.
“I know we’ve kind of been advertising ... the potential for above-average precipitation, but that looks like it’s moved toward a near normal,” DeMaria said.
In Santa Fe County, the normal October rainfall is about 1.5 inches.
El Niño is a climate pattern connected to the Pacific Ocean cooling near the Equator, often causing wetter conditions in the Southwest during the winter and early spring. That’s the reverse of a La Niña, in which the warming southern Pacific causes drier-than-normal winter and spring condition in the region.
Forecasts of an exceptionally arid summer did come true, including in Santa Fe, which had record dry weather. Santa Fe logged 0.11 inches of rain in July, beating the previous record by one-hundredth of an inch, Mangham said after the briefing.
August wasn’t much more moist, with 0.45 inches of rain, he said. Normal rainfall in July and August, the peak of the monsoon, is around 1.8 inches.
In September, about 1.5 inches of rain fell in Santa Fe, returning the area to a more normal level of precipitation, Mangham said.
“But you haven’t made up for the deficit of the previous months,” he said.
TAKEAWAYS
◆ The Santa Fe area will have sunny weather with below-average temperatures through the week.
◆ October is now expected to have average rainfall of about
1.5 inches, contrary to earlier forecasts predicting a wetter-than-normal month because of the El Niño weather pattern.
◆ The state and Santa Fe County have fallen into more severe drought conditions from just a few months ago, largely because of the exceptionally dry July and August.
Various computer models, especially a European one, point to El Niño causing above-average snowstorms in January, February and March after a dry December, Mangham said.
“A snowy winter, but a late start,” he said.