Extreme Cold/Wind Chill — Southern Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico

2011-02-01 to 2011-02-04 · Southern Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico

Event narrative

High temperatures across the Sacramento Mountains on Feb 2nd included -4F at Weed, -3F at Mayhill, -1F in Cloudcroft and 1F at Mescalero. Overnight low temperatures on Feb 3rd included -30F at the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Mescalero, -19F in Cloudcroft, -20F at Mayhill, -16F in Weed and -18F at Cosmic. The town of Cloudcroft lost between 500,000 and 600,000 gallons of water due to water line breaks.

Wider weather episode

A strong upper low dropped down the Northern Rockies which pushed a back door arctic cold front through the region. An upper level ridge was located over the eastern Pacific with the arctic jet steam diving south to the Mexican border. These two features combined to bring extremely cold air into the Western United States from Alaska and Canada. Numerous areas experienced rolling power outages and natural gas shortages along with burst pipes. The state of New Mexico declared a State of Emergency due to the natural gas shortages.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 284696. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.