If December is any indication of how much snow will fall this winter in Los Alamos and White Rock, Laboratory employees should keep the snow shovels and tire chains handy. Or maybe not.
Twenty-nine inches of snow fell in Los Alamos in December 2008, said Laboratory meteorologist Scot Johnson of Environmental Data and Analysis (WES-DA). The total is half of the 58.7 inches of snow that falls during the snow season.
But weather forecasters are predicting warmer-than-normal temperatures and below-average precipitation through the spring, said Johnson. A strengthening “La Niña” in the equatorial Pacific may steer storms and precipitation away from New Mexico and the southwestern U.S., he said.
How snowy was it in Los Alamos and White Rock last month? Snow was recorded on 13 days. The storm track parked itself over the southwestern U.S., which helped bring more moisture to Northern New Mexico, Johnson explained.
For all of 2008, 17.4 inches of precipitation was recorded in Los Alamos or about 92 percent of normal.
The storms also meant cooler temperatures, however, the average temperature in Los Alamos and White Rock in December was pretty close to average. Low temperatures were slightly below normal last month in White Rock, Johnson noted.
For the year, Los Alamos’s average temperature of 48 degrees Fahrenheit was near the 30-year average (47.9 F), Johnson added.
It was windy in Los Alamos and White Rock last month. Average daily wind speeds were 50 percent above normal, with wind gusts above 40 miles per hour recorded on five days in Los Alamos and three days in White Rock.
More information about weather in the region can be found here.
