Storms expected to leave Santa Fe with warmer temps next week

Dec. 1—There's good news for those already tired of weather-related closures, delays and slippery roads— the last of three storm systems hitting Santa Fe is expected to be gone by Saturday morning.

The coming week looks cool and clear, said David Craft, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.

Though temperatures will hover in the high 30s and low 40s Saturday and Sunday, there will be a "slow, gradual warming trend that will commence and continue through midweek," he said in an interview Friday.

By Thursday, temperatures in the Santa Fe area could reach a high of 50, he said.

All three winter storms came from the Pacific. The first and most active brought snowfall amounts in the 4- to 8-inch range in and around Santa Fe, and closed schools, governmental agencies and some private businesses Thursday and led to problems for some motorists.

A second storm that passed through the region Thursday night and into Friday morning delayed the opening of Santa Fe Public Schools and some other governmental agencies, but it had pretty much played out by mid-morning Friday.

Craft said his agency did not yet have any formal reports of how much snow that second system brought to the Santa Fe area.

As for the third and last storm in the wave, predicted to hit somewhere north of Santa Fe Friday night, Craft said he believed it would bring scattered snow showers with little if any accumulation.

Such storms are always welcomed by those worried about the area's water issues and the ever-present threat of drought. But skiers were heartened as well. Ski Santa Fe reported receiving 14 inches of snow in a 24-hour period ending Friday afternoon. The ski basin said the snow base is 33 inches.

Craft said there is a chance another winter storm will hit the Santa Fe area around Dec. 10.

He said various forecast models show that cold low front "barreling" into the Southwest. What is unclear at this point, he said, is where it will hit and how much snow it will bring.

"The question is, will it go too far south to bring us snow or come over New Mexico, in which case you will get snow," he said.

He said the recent cycle of storms in the Santa Fe area shows the El Niño weather pattern — a hotter, drier summer followed by wetter-than-normal conditions in the fall and winter — is coming to fruition.

Morika Vorenberg Hensley, executive director of the Santa Fe Watershed, a nonprofit association that works to protect and restore the health of the 45-mile Santa Fe River's watershed area, said "anything helps" in terms of precipitation.

"We are absolutely thrilled at the snowpack levels and hoping to get as much of El Niño as we possibly can, because snowpack is so much better for holding water in our landscape than rain," she said.