Northern New Mexico Cool Summer living? (Santa Fe, Ruidoso: ski resort, club, best)

[lacey]

Eagle Nest or Red River or Cimarron. Beautiful country.

[cloud dweller]

It snows alot in winter in Northern New Mexico.But,does bright sun and elevation make it warmer,does it melt the snow by noon?
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[37sunflower]

Land in Northern New Mex may be expensive, but I moved here from teh Bay Area. It doesn't even begin to compare. You'll think you're shopping at Real estate Wal-Mart, comparatively...

[37sunflower]

does it melt the snow by noon?

Not in Los Alamos, NM. Snow was on the ground all winter.

[jazzlover]

Above 7,500 to 8,000 feet in northern New Mexico, there should be snow on the ground most of the winter. I say "should" because several recent winters have been anything but "normal" in the Rocky Mountain West. Much of the region, with some exception, has been in a significant drought now for several years. Winter temperatures have also been above normal. There is a big debate about whether this has been caused by natural variation, global warming, or a combination of both (I personally favor the combination theory), but it is having definite effects. The biggest visible effect has been the proliferation of timber killed by either mountain pine beetles or spruce budworm. A century of fire suppression and the resulting overcrowding of trees, and several winters with insufficient cold temperatures to kill overwintering insects have led to epidemic tree kills all over the region. I have lived in the Rocky Mountain West my entire life (over 50 years) and I have never seen so many dead and dying trees in the forests. Pretty scary.

[Towanda]

The first time I came out to New Mexico after the pine beetles killed all the trees, I was shocked to see the thousands and thousands of dead trees and brown mountains. I cried and cried and cried.

[catman]

That's terrible. What parts of northern NM does this affect? All of it? I hope not.

[LRUA]

Anywhere above 7000 feet in New Mexico is cool, Red River at 8700 feet is very cool, also Eagle Nest at 8200 feet, Truchas at just over 8000 feet has a great climate with "milder" overnight lows, while Gavilan gets very cold at night, it is the only place in New Mexico that averages below zero in the winter at night (it also has New Mexico's official coldest temperature record, minus 51 degrees !!). Any northern NM mountain town will have cool to cold winters (high's in the mid 30's to low 40's) and cool to pleasant summers (high's upper 70's to low 80's). Southern NM mountain towns have generally "milder" winters, Ruidoso daytime average high in Dec/Jan is 50degrees, Cloudcroft at 8700 feet it is 42 degrees.

[AndyJ]

Originally Posted by catman

That's terrible. What parts of northern NM does this affect? All of it? I hope not.

The pine beetle epidemic affects a lot of NM forests from Santa Fe north, and can be clearly seen as you drive I25 from Santa Fe to Las Vegas. It's a difficult problem to curb, as the best solutions the Forest Service has are to either clear cut a bunch of areas or to spray, and both of those pose their own problems. Fortunately, it's not as if all forest in that part of the state is brown and dying - as big a problem as it is, you can go to Carson, Cibola, or Santa Fe Nat'l Forests and see nothing of it, although if I had to guess I'd say Santa Fe Nat'l Forest bears the worst of it in the state. Not sure if it affects the mountain forests in either southwestern NM or around Cloudcroft.

[jazzlover]

Beetle kill is heavily affecting areas all the way from New Mexico into Canada. The mountain beetle attacks ponderosa (and a similar beetle attacks Dougals fir) in New Mexico, and adds lodgepole which is more common farther north. Spruce budworm, as its name implies, attacks spruce trees, as well as Douglas firs.

Once an area is infested with beetle, there are generally only two effective ways to stem it-- 1) remove the trees by logging (not popular) or 2) fire. Don't do the former, and you will probably eventually get the latter. The other thing that can stem the beetle is if there is a sufficiently cold winter (with a fair stretch of continuous below zero temperatures) to kill the overwintering larvae. There was some hope that there might have been enough days this winter to do that in some places. Unfortunately, warm dry winters are the beetle's friend, and we've had a number of those recently here in the Rocky Mountain region.