Drought — West Central Highlands, New Mexico

2022-07-01 to 2022-07-31 · West Central Highlands, New Mexico

Event narrative

Severe to extreme drought conditions from June 2022 improved to moderate to severe drought in July.

Wider weather episode

The North American Monsoon arrived early this year and stayed active throughout all of the month of July 2022 across northern and central New Mexico. Most of the month saw a traditional monsoon pattern develop which meant that the monsoonal moisture plume was focused primarily across western and central New Mexico. This allowed for daily rounds of thunderstorms to focus in these areas with eastern New Mexico commonly seeing more hot and dry days rather than rainy ones. Precipitation totals across western and central New Mexico were generally around 2 to 4 inches during the month with some locally higher amounts in the northern high terrain. Across the east, precipitation totals were generally less than one inch. The drought improvements noted in June continued throughout the month of July with now 76 percent of the state in at least severe drought. About 33 percent of that was in at least extreme drought with about 11 percent in the exceptional category. Most of the improvement was along and west of the central mountain chain with no improvement across the eastern plains.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1034452. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.