May 3-5, 2025 Santa Fe, NM Area Wild Weather - Winter and Severe

[John Farley]

I was excited when I caught thundersnow near Ski Santa Fe last Saturday, but it turned out that was just the beginning of a period of wild weather in New Mexico and in particular, the Santa Fe area. I successfully chased thundersnow again the next day (May 4) in the late afternoon (pretty rare to get it 2 days in a row), as well as a storm earlier in the afternoon that had a severe thunderstorm warning for wind and hail. And then late in the evening, a storm came to me (no chasing involved) that produced the rare combination of hail and snow at the same time, along with lots of thunder and lightning. And then the next day (May 5), another hailstorm in the morning and an intense storm in the afternoon that produced more hail and wintry mixed precipitation, as well as a barrage of lightning that took out our power (and power in much of northern Santa Fe and northward) for more than 6 hours. Santa Fe got around 3 and a half inches of rain (and melted hail, graupel, and snow) from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning, more than triple the May average. And 1-3 feet of snow in the high elevations of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I made a Webpage on my observations of these storms with detailed reports and pictures and videos for each day, accessible at:

https://johnefarley.com/NM-503-505-2025.htm

Here are a few pictures; there are many more and several videos in the reports on the Web page.


Hail on top of accumulated snow in the yard.



Approaching storm with hail and mixed winter precipitation. And lots of lightning. This is the one that took out power in much of Santa Fe.


Snow Monday afternoon at the Big Tesuque campground and picnic area. There was much more by the next morning.