Heavy Snow — Roosevelt County, New Mexico

2024-02-11 · Roosevelt County, New Mexico

Event narrative

A trained spotter just southwest of Portales reported 7 inches of snow. Other reports across the county ranged from 3 to 6 inches.

Wider weather episode

A strengthening closed upper low winter storm system swung across northern and central NM, bringing heavy snow to parts of northern NM on February 10th. A brief period of near winter storm criteria heavy snow also impacted the Albuquerque metro area for a 1 to 2 hour period on the morning of the 10th. This system continued to track over eastern NM, slowing in speed and combining with a backdoor surface cold front pushing southward through eastern NM. These two features combined to produce heavy snow over parts of the northeastern plains during the predawn hours of February 11th, and later past sunrise in the morning through east-central NM from Clovis to Roswell. There was a west to east oriented mesoscale oriented band of heavy snow stretching from near Vaughn to Clovis that dumped 4 to 7 inches of snow in a span of a couple of hours. Heavy snow in Roswell also caused 21 cars to become stuck in snow, needing to be pulled out by the Roswell Community Disaster Relief service. Thankfully, there were no reports of injuries or fatalities. General snow amounts most areas ranged from 2 to 6 inches with locally higher amounts of near 10 inches atop the peaks of the southern Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains, and a storm total high of 19.5 inches atop Sierra Blanca Peak.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1151830. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.