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Eastern NM ... tornadoes ... almost always just touch down out in the country ...
Of course, if you were to take a map of Eastern NM, mount it
on a wall then put on a blindfold, poking thumbtacks into the
the map in random places, you will almost always poke a hole
in a non-urban area.
One of the things that is a huge problem, and kind of a direct effect on the fires, would be the pine beetle. It is a huge problem in my state.
I scoot through N.M. every three months to visit friends from Albuquerque to Tucumcari to south of Roswell. Coming in from Farmington on 550, I don't see a lot of pine beetle kill when I cross the divide and come into Cuba. Jaxart, if you're reading here, what's going on in your area regarding the pine beetle problem? it's been a few years since I've been to Ruidoso coming in from Roswell. The last time I was there was coming in from Alamogordo on 70 and going right back.
Our valley on the high road was evacuated in '96 for wildfires. It's always been a concern since we are up against national forest. Luckily, nobody's place burned.
When I taught out on the Navajo reservation, flash floods were the greatest concern with the arroyos running. We could drive to Farmington in the morning & have the arroyos on the pipeline roads running like rivers to cross in the afternoon.
Actually, I can remember the main street in Dixon running like a river from the arroyos feeding into it in the '70s when I lived there.
Jaxart, if you're reading here, what's going on in your area regarding the pine beetle problem?
Ponderosa Pine bark beetles have been a problem for years in my area. They seem to come in waves - not sure why. And they attack "local" areas more often than a regional attack. It seems that ALL conifers have their own brand of bark beetles and in northern NM several years ago there was almost total decimation in some areas of the Piñon pine trees. Lincoln county escaped that plague (knock wood). But many fir and possibly spruce trees have been killed off in elevations in the Lincoln Nat. Forest at which they grow.
Speaking of floods - the tiny trickle of a stream that is known locally as the "Rio Ruidoso" flooded a couple of summer's ago and washed away a few houses, damaged many others and destroyed infrastructure that is still not fully repaired (roads, bridges, sewer lines).
I lived in Carlsbad. I think I only heard about one tornado in the time I lived there. Most of the tornadoes and major stormy weather went past the area and then hit Texas near the Texas/NM border. often, the sky would cloud up and it would look like something was going to happen, but all we got was a pretty lightning display. We had more problems when it actually rained. The town had never installed drainage systems so the streets flooded during even normal rains.
We also had some pretty major hailstorms. We had one storm that hailed for over an hour because two storm systems met up overhead.
We also had some major dust storms. We got caught out in one and it felt like we had been sandblasted. The dust devils were pretty wild looking too.
The other naturally occurring weather I can think of is drought, but you'd expect that in a desert.
Thank's all for filling me in. I forgot about the fire danger. Is that something you should be concerned with if you are living in a populated area? I know in California we also have fire problems and for those living in a populated area it is more of the smoke and floating debris than anything else. The concern in a populated area in California normally is not with the fire unless your home is on a hillside. For the majority the fire would not be the problem. Is that similar to New Mexico?
Does the Middle Rio Grande have flooding problems in the Socorro area? The Rio Salado and Rio Puerco do not seem to have any flood control structures and the valley is very flat.
FWIW - Up here in the North East we have had major power failures for the last two winters because of ice or wind storms taking down lots of old trees. We were out of power for 6 days during the ice storm and 3 days a few weeks ago due to the wind storm. Inconvenient, but not a disaster.
FWIW - Up here in the North East we have had major power failures for the last two winters because of ice or wind storms taking down lots of old trees.
Where I live the power company is very good about proactively clearing trees from easements on a year around basis. That reduces the problem but of course doesn't eliminate it when very tall trees topple over for whatever reason. Power outages that used to be a frequent problem here now are an infrequent nuisance.
I seem to remember fairly severe flooding in Alamagordo not so long ago, but those things are relatively few and far between. For the most part, New Mexico ducks any 'regular' disasters. Have always wondered about the rift Mortimer brought up though.
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