More heavy rain possible in parts of New Mexico Tuesday

[00:00:00]We had a nice downpour.

[00:00:01]>> Yeah, really.

[00:00:02]Yes.

[00:00:03]>> It's beautiful. It came down super heavy out there. Some nice really big raindrops, too.

[00:00:07]A little over a tenth of an inch of rain fell with that storm in parts of Albuquerque. Farmington also picked up some very heavy rainfall with a downpour that moved in earlier this evening. And with that, plenty of thunder and lightning. At one point in San Juan County, they were counting 600 cloud-to-ground lightning lightning strikes with this thunderstorm that moved through Farmington. And 1,700 flashes of lightning up in the clouds. A really quite electrical storm up there in Farmington earlier tonight that dropped over a tenth of an inch of rain up there. We're starting to see some drier weather moving in to New Mexico now as all those thunderstorms have been pushed out to the west. A little bit of rain wrapping up from southwestern New Mexico. That flash flood warning still in effect for the Columbus area down along the Mexican border. And then those storms through Farmington are pushing out of western New Mexico tonight. May hear a couple rumbles of thunder in Gallup in the next hour. And there's some storms clearing out of southwestern Colorado, as well. Over a tenth of an inch of rain has officially fell in Farmington. Now, here in Albuquerque, I've seen a couple reports. I know it says zero there at the airport, but I also saw an observation from the airport of two hundredths of an inch of rain.

[00:01:11]So, we'll have to wait until tomorrow, I guess, to see what's officially going to go down in the record books. But it definitely did rain out there. For uh Roswell, even had some thunderstorms this afternoon picking up four hundredths of an inch of rain. Several hundredths fell across southwestern New Mexico. But of course, we also saw some much heavier rainfall amounts than that in other areas.

[00:01:28]Close to two to three inches even in some parts of southwestern New Mexico up in the higher elevations. Tonight, we have some nice rain-cooled air out across the western half of New Mexico where temps are down in the 60s and 70s.

[00:01:40]Still 81 here in Albuquerque. It's the same temperature down all of I-40 to Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, even down to Roswell. Now, today, the big reason we had all this heavy rain was thanks to this low pressure system that was sitting down over far west Texas. Well, tomorrow that's going to be making its way over the bootheel. And as [clears throat] we head into Wednesday, that'll lift a little bit farther north, funneling up more moisture, especially into the western half of New Mexico, and bringing in more lift into the atmosphere around the four corners.

[00:02:06]However, by Thursday, we're going to see this high-pressure system make its way into the eastern part of New Mexico, and then eventually settle over the southern part of the state as we head into Friday, and that's going to have a big impact on our monsoon pattern and who's going to be seeing a chance for rain.

[00:02:21]So, tomorrow, we're going to keep the monsoon meter at a six. We're still So, we're going to be looking at scattered showers and thunderstorms tomorrow afternoon, especially across the western half of New Mexico, locally heavy rainfall out along the Arizona state line.

[00:02:34]Then, we as head into Wednesday, we're going to lower the monsoon meter by just one notch because of some drier air that'll start moving into eastern and southern New Mexico. Storms could still drop heavy rainfall though into western parts of the state and southern Colorado. Then, we head into Thursday, still going to keep it at as a five because of the amount of moisture we have in the atmosphere, but the rain chance will start spreading across more of northern and eastern New Mexico or northeastern New Mexico as we head into Friday, as that'll be wrapping around this area of high pressure that's going to be over southern New Mexico, and that's also going to bring in some very hot weather as we head into the end of the week. So, tomorrow, areas in yellow here from Cortez at Farmington, Gallup, Silver City, Lordsburg, that's where we have a higher chance here in the state to see some heavy rainfall and flash flooding. And as we get into Wednesday, the threat will move into far northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, including the San Juan Mountains. But, even for Durango, we're still going to be looking at daily rounds of showers and thunderstorms for at least the next 7 days. The monsoon continues to be very active there in southern Colorado and across parts of western New Mexico as this pattern tomorrow should also bring us another good chance for rain in Farmington, Gallup, down to Silver City, and Lordsburg, where we have that threat for some heavy rainfall and flash flooding again tomorrow afternoon. We'll also watch more storms over the Sacramento Mountains that'll eventually move into Alamogordo, but as they develop, they could bring another threat for burn scar flash flooding to the Ruidoso area like we saw today. And then remember that area of high pressure I was talking about? As that moves into eastern New Mexico on Wednesday, that'll begin a stretch of triple digit heat in the Roswell area and across southern New Mexico, and we'll climb up to 104 Friday, and that's where high temperatures are going to stay through the weekend into early next week. But with that high pressure to the south, that'll actually draw a monsoon moisture around it, and bring a higher chance for rain from Las Vegas across northeastern New Mexico Friday and this weekend. But for the northern mountains, that monsoon moisture is going to stay in place every day. It's just going to change the direction that those storms will move.

[00:04:25]So, tomorrow the storms are going to move off to the northwest, but as we head into this weekend, the storms are then going to be moving off to the east.

[00:04:31]So, just about every day storms will be moving in a different direction bringing in different areas a chance for rain and thunderstorms, and that's why we'll see a better chance for rain by this weekend for those into the east mountains. But tomorrow's pattern with those winds off to the northwest, that should help to bring in a couple isolated thunderstorms around the metro tomorrow afternoon and evening as we'll continue to see at least an isolated chance for some rain and thunderstorms here in Albuquerque every day. Our best chance is Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday as we're up to nearly 100° by Friday afternoon.