The Amtrak station in Las Vegas, New Mexico on Nov. 7, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Cole Rehbein)
Electricity had been restored to many homes in New Mexico by Friday after heavy snow in northern stretches of the state, and temperatures were forecast to climb above freezing heading into the weekend.
Sunny and warmer weather might be welcome news for some, but emergency management officials urged caution with the potential for flooding from the resulting snow melt. Some areas near Rociada got up to 3 feet of snow in the past three days, while Clayton near the Texas and Oklahoma state lines received nearly 16 feet of snow in that time period, according to the National Weather Service.
Power line crews restored electricity to about 37,000 homes in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque areas that are hooked up to Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state’s largest utility. Nearly 9,000 people remained without electricity, according to the company’s outage map.
Just under 50 additional homes in counties outside of Albuquerque were without power, according to the outage map maintained by the Central New Mexico Electric Cooperative. Crews also got juice running back into just over 6,000 homes in tribal and rural communities north of the state’s capital that buy power from Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative. Nearly 2,500 of those homes remained without electricity on Friday morning, according to the cooperative’s outage map.
The city of Las Vegas and the counties of Mora and San Miguel are within the burn scar of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire, where the soil is particularly vulnerable to flooding, state emergency management officials have said.
The snow may be stopping in Las Vegas, but the danger isn’t over yet, Mayor David Romero said in a news release.
“As temperatures rise, we expect significant snowmelt, which could lead to flooding in low-lying areas and near waterways,” Romero wrote.