Nine new inches of snow left by the storm on mountain peaks will prolong stream run-off

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A massive storm that moved through Lincoln County Friday into Saturday was born in the Bering Sea and lived up to its billing by the National Weather Service.
The snow telemetry station on Sierra Blanca Peak registered 9 inches of new snow by the time the sky cleared. Parts of Ruidoso for the total storm received 4 inches to 5 inches, Randall Hergert, a meteorologist with the service’s office in Albuquerque said Monday. His data for those measurements came from a regional automated weather station 4 ½ miles southeast of Nogal.
“It definitely brought in a lot of beneficial moisture to the state,” he said. “Plenty of snowfall in high elevation peaks will keep the snowpack going for at least a little bit longer or it produced snow pack for those that had already seen it melt off, keeping the stream flow melt off running longer than it would have (without the snow).”
“The storm was very anomalous for this time of year,” Hergert said. “The air mass originated up in the Bering Sea in Alaska and the jet stream over that region was strengthened and allowed that storm to find its way all the way down here to New Mexico.
“Given its source was the reason why the air masses at the upper levels of the atmosphere were so cold,” he said. “So we saw anomalous cold temperatures, with plenty of moisture embedded (from the northern Pacific) and all that coupled together produced lots of snow and cold temperatures Friday and Saturday.”
The storm also resulted in breaking Albuquerque’s record for the lowest “high” temperature for April 29 at 49 degrees, he said.
The week ahead in Ruidoso looks dry, Hergert said.
“The precipitation chances for Tuesday through Wednesday morning are sticking up in the northern plains, not down to the Sacramento Mountains,” he said. “The week will be really nice to get outside and enjoy the weather.”