Northern New Mexico Snow Squalls and Thundersnow Storms
May 8, 2014

by John Farley

On May 8, convective snow squalls developed over northern New Mexico. At all altitudes around the Santa Fe area, the predominant precipitation type with these squalls and thunderstorms was graupel (snow pellets). Even in the city of Santa Fe, where the temperature rose as high as 60 before the squalls developed and at times between squalls, snow pellets were the main form of precipitation, although some rain did mix in. In the mountains, it was a mixture of graupel and ordinary snow, though the graupel appeared to predominate.

As the first of the three squalls I photographed passed just north of Santa Fe and moved into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I headed up Hyde Park road toward Ski Santa Fe. Along the leading edge of this squall was a lowered area that I would characterize as a shelf cloud:

I proceeded up toward Hyde State Park and into the squall, as graupel began to fall. The temperature when I started out was in the 50s, but as the graupel pulled the cold air down, the temperature rapidly fell into the 30s. Here is a picture I took of the snow pellets coming down at a trailhead a little below the state park:

After a while I continued up past the state park to the Big Tesuque campground. Most of the precipitation has passed over, with a little light snow (all ordinary snow) falling and a temperature of 33. The altitude here is about 9500 feet above sea level. About 0.4" of snow and graupel had accumulated here, mainly on grassy and elevated surfaces:

After this, it looked like most of this area of precipitation had passed over. I could see some distant convection to the west and northwest, but nothing close, so I decided to head back down. Should have stayed up there, probably, as things turn out, since what I was really hoping for was to get some thundersnow video, and I probably would have if I had just stayed there.

As it turns out, a strong new cell popped up just west of Santa Fe and rapidly grew and intensified. But a combination of traffic jams and navigational blunders left me playing catch-up, as this cell produced heavy showers of graupel over the southeast part of Santa Fe then moved on into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains east and southeast of Santa Fe. As I tried to catch up to it, now behind the storm on I-25, it looked quite menacing as it moved into the mountains ahead of me:

Shortly after I took this picture, I saw a bolt of CG lightning - thundersnow! On I-25 in southeast Santa Fe, between the St. Francis Ave. and Old Pecos Trail exits, I ran into heavy graupel, mixed at first with a little rain but quickly going to all graupel. From around there to the El Dorado exit, the ground was lightly covered (but enough to be completely white in places) with the snow pellets, and they came down hard at times. Again, the temperature fell into the 30s. I figured if I could get up into the higher terrain around Glorietta, I might be able to get some thundersnow video, but another traffic jam due to construction took care of that, and I could never get a lot beyond the back edge of the precipitation. Plus, the storm began to weaken nearly as quickly as it had ramped up.

I went as far as Pecos, but knew by then my chance of seeing any more thundersnow with this storm was done. So I headed back to Santa Fe, where I noticed more strong cells to the north. Although I could not get to the strongest ones before they moved up into the mountains, I did photograph one more cell which, when I got home, the lightning tracker clearly showed had been producing some lightning. Here is a distant picture of that thundersnow cell:

Pretty interesting stuff for a week into May, although it turned out it would be neither the last nor the heaviest snow to hit New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains this May.

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