Thunderstorm Wind — Lincoln, New Mexico

2025-07-08 · near Oscuro, Lincoln, New Mexico

Event narrative

Severe thunderstorms in the area resulted in a brief wind gust of 61 mph at the Pole 616 mesonet station on the White Sands Missile Range.

Wider weather episode

The monsoon high was centered over the Arizona and New Mexico border July 8th. Daytime heating combined with rich Gulf moisture along the east slopes of the Sacramento Mountains resulted in the development of thunderstorms over the west end of the South Fork burn scar during the early afternoon. These storms trained slowly across the South Fork burn scar into midtown Ruidoso. Between 1.5 to 3.5 inches of rainfall was observed on the burn scar along with up to 1.5 inches of rainfall in the Village of Ruidoso. Significant to catastrophic flash flooding and debris flows were observed across the burn scar and on the Rio Ruidoso all the way downstream to the Ruidoso Downs horse racetrack and casino. With the extremely high rainfall amounts and debris runoff, the Rio Ruidoso at Hollywood rose from 1.43 feet to major and new record flood stage of 20.24 feet in approximately 30 minutes! This replaced the previous record of 15.86 feet set back on July 20th, 2024 which was also due to burn scar flash flooding and debris flows. Flash flooding and debris flows subsided during the early to mid evening hours.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.4000, -106.3600)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1262335. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.