Hail — Bernalillo, New Mexico

2025-07-12 · near Sandia Park, Bernalillo, New Mexico

Event narrative

A CoCoRaHS observer a few miles east southeast of Sandia Park observed hail up to quarter size in diameter from a severe thunderstorm. The hail resulted in some minor leaf damage.

Wider weather episode

The monsoon high that was over the state the earlier in the week, moved west over western Arizona and southern California on July 10th in response to an upper level trough moving across the northern and central Rockies. This resulted in the development of severe thunderstorms across the northeast and east central plains ahead of the trough axis during the afternoon and evening hours. Additionally, a drier thunderstorm resulted in a high wind gust at a mesonet station on the White Sand Missile range. Storms weakened around sunset due to the loss of daytime heating as they continued moving south into southeast New Mexico. Another round of strong to severe thunderstorms developed along a dryline across the east slopes of the central mountain chain during the afternoon hours on July 11th. Storms across the east slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains congealed into a line of severe storms across the northeast and east central plains during the mid evening hours bringing severe thunderstorm wind gusts of up to 77 mph at various stations across Quay County. This line of storms exited into West Texas with additional redevelopment across the east central and southeast plains during the early morning hours of July 12th.

Outflow from these late night and early morning storms pushed a backdoor front and higher surface moisture behind the front west through the gaps of the central mountain and to the Continental Divide in western New Mexico setting the stage for shower and thunderstorm activity across central New Mexico during the afternoon and evening hours on July 12th. Intense severe thunderstorms across the Sandia Mountains and East Mountain communities resulted in hail up to golf ball size along with flash flooding in the Tijeras Arroyo, Arroyo de San Antonio and other low water crossings in the area due to rainfall amounts of up to 3 inches. Gusty outflow winds from storms to the north and east resulted in a 66 mph wind gust at the Albuquerque Sunport.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (35.1500, -106.2800)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1262750. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.