99% Of NM In Drought; Gila, Rio Honda Snowpacks At 0%; Jemez, Pecos Basins @ 16%, 3% Respectively

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What you see is what you get when it comes to New Mexico’s mountain snowpacks, and there’s not much to see. In some cases, there’s nothing to see. The best snowpack in the state, in the Rio Chama Basin, is at 45 percent of normal. The Jemez and Pecos river basins are at 16 and 3 percent of normal, respectively, and the Gila and Rio Hondo basins are at zero.

Royce Fontenot, senior hydrologist in the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service, said the snowfall season has peaked out. “We are done there,” Fontenot said during a New Mexico Drought Monitor Working Group session this week. “What we have on the mountains is what you are going to get. What you see is what you get for (spring) runoff.”

He said that even the snow that fell in some of the high northern mountain ranges earlier this week was not enough to help the state hydrologically.

The Drought Monitor Work Group, made up of members of the National Weather Service and state and federal agencies, determines the extent and severity of drought in the state. An updated drought map released Thursday shows that nearly 99 percent of New Mexico is in some stage of drought and more than 34 percent, the northern third of the state, is in extreme drought.

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https://www.abqjournal.com/1152182