近距离内射合集

New Mexico has not bounced back from the blistering it took from an exceptionally hot and arid summer and fall.

Andrew Mangham, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said New Mexico is experiencing the worst drought conditions among Southwest and Mountain West states 鈥� Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and California.

鈥淎rizona is nipping at our heels, but New Mexico is seeing more extensive and more severe drought than those states,鈥� Mangham said. 鈥淕o back to July. That was just ugly with how hot and dry it was. We are just trying to recover from a hot, dry summer, a hot, dry fall and a winter that got a late start.鈥�

He noted, however, that the state may be about to turn a corner to some relief.

鈥淚鈥檓 optimistic by nature. I tend to look for the silver lining,鈥� Mangham said. 鈥淚n the last week of December, and from then on, we have seen several repeated rounds of moisture.

鈥淭he Climate Prediction Center is pointing to more wet conditions over the next few weeks, and some (weather) models are pointing toward wetter-than-normal months ahead. It鈥檚 hard to hang your hat on what鈥檚 going to happen, but I think we are heading to a pretty wet late winter and early spring.鈥�

A little better

Mangham is a member of the New Mexico Drought Monitoring Workgroup, representatives of state and federal agencies who participate each month in a phone conference to assess the extent of drought in the state and produce a map that reflects those conditions. State climatologist Dave DuBois moderates the phone-in session.

The January drought map that came out of the Workgroup鈥檚 meeting last week is little changed from the December map. It shows that slightly more than 72% of the state is in severe drought, the third-most serious category. That鈥檚 down from 82% in December.

鈥淭he current map shows fairly minor improvements, mostly in the northwestern part of the state,鈥� Mangham said. 鈥淲e have had decent precipitation across the north. The southeast is missing out and the southwest is missing out.鈥�

Up north, there are swatches of extreme drought, the second-worst category, in San Juan, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Santa Fe and San Miguel counties.

Down south, however, extreme drought stains Hidalgo, Grant, Luna, Do帽a Ana, Otero, Lincoln, Chaves and Eddy counties and leaks into Catron, Sierra, Lea and De Baca counties. Exceptional drought, the most serious category, is in parts of Hidalgo, Grant, Otero, Luna, Eddy and Chaves counties.

鈥淭here has been improvement in soil moisture in the northern part of the state, particularly the northwest, in the last three months but especially in the last six weeks,鈥� Mangham said. 鈥淚n the north, it is wetter more than dry. The rest of the state is neutral or leaning toward dry.鈥�

Let it snow

New Mexico got off to a slow start on snowpack this winter, but Mangham said it is starting to charge up pretty good now.

鈥淭he Upper Rio Grande Basin is filling up rapidly,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t is at 105% of normal, and it generally peaks in mid-March to late-March. The Jemez River Basin is at 130% of normal and the Pecos headwaters at 115% of normal. The Pecos snowpack doesn鈥檛 peak until the end of March.鈥�

But if you think that suggests a robust water supply for the irrigation season, which starts in March, don鈥檛 get too excited. Mangham said that while all runoff is good, the runoff most important to New Mexico is from snowpack in the San Juan headwaters in Colorado.

鈥淚t鈥檚 less of a rosy picture in Colorado,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he San Juan headwaters snowpack is 70% of normal. They may have more snow than we do, but looking at it as a percentage of normal, that鈥檚 not good. The projections of water supply are not that great. We want to see storms tracking north. We need to see it snow up in the San Juan Mountains and the southern Rockies.

鈥淏ut basically, it鈥檚 too early to tell. We have plenty of winter to go.鈥�