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2. The point JPJordan seemed to be making was that Ruidoso is not as hot as Santa Fe in the summer.
Seriously....I'm shocked. I just checked the temperatures for June 2009 for both Ruidoso and Santa Fe. Ruidoso WAS cooler than Santa Fe every single day, save one. On some days, you'd see Santa Fe at 90+, while Ruidoso would be at the high 70s-low 80s.
The low for the period was at times substantially lower for Ruidoso than SF....
June 1, 2009, Ruidoso, 21 Santa Fe, 45 June 2, 2009 Ruidoso, 19 Santa Fe, 48
Source: Weather Underground Calendar View
Ruidoso: KSRR
Santa Fe: KSAF
You could have knocked me over with a feather on this one.
June 1, 2009, Ruidoso, 21 Santa Fe, 45 June 2, 2009 Ruidoso, 19 Santa Fe, 48
That has to be CELSIUS. No way did it get that far down on the F scale. Ruidoso's low for at least the past two months has been in 40-60F range. Last night it was down to 48F at my house and only got to a high of about 78F yesterday.
See attached for a graph of the weather for the week beginning June 1, 2010. Degrees F scale is on the left, C on the right. PS I added another chart for another weather station that covers the month from May 15 to June 12, 2010. Again the F scale is on the left side.
The other comments are correct, though. I'm still really surprised that Ruidoso, so far south, is cooler than SF during the summer daytime.
Think of it this way. The city of SF does NOT have towering pine trees - only scrubby pinon and junipers - meaning it's similar to the locale where Ruidoso's airport is located. The airport is typically about 10F warmer year around than the tree shaded canyons in town. And within the town, temps can vary as much as 10F on a given day. So it's really hard to make comparisons between two disparate cities with somewhat disparate environments.
I would compare Santa Fe's temps at the elevation where the tall pines begin up on the road to the ski area rather than the town proper.
Today I was using my car's air conditioner at noon in Alamogordo, and shut it down as I got to High Rolls and Mountainair. I had bought lunch stuff in Alamo and stopped under the cool trees to eat it before heading on back home through the reservation.
Of course, you can go a little farther south...and up 1800 feet in elevation, and Cloudcroft is nearly 10 degrees cooler on summer afternoons than Ruidoso. As you might expect, Cloudcroft is a bit wetter than Ruidoso. Typically, you even get a couple of August days in Cloudcroft (when the monsoon is in full swing) that are cloudy and rainy all day long, with temperatures failing to rise out of the 50s.
My AC (both car and house) stays on most of the summer in Alamo. You certainly took the backroads if you turned off from High Rolls and Mountain Park to go to Ruidoso.
I'm about due for another trip to both Ruidoso and Cloudcroft. Only problem is, I don't ever want to come back down when it's this hot....
Most places have hit 100 degrees at some point. It all depends on how often it happens, and even more so on the humidity.
I love Santa Fe's climate except for winter, which is a bit nippy for me, not terrible. I like to ride a motorcycle year round, and it's a bit cool for that. I'd certainly trade it for the heat and humidity I'm in now. It's 83 degrees at one a.m. in Fort Worth, and quite humid!
What I don't get is why Alpine, Ft Davis and Marfa are cooling down so much faster at night than Alamo is.
It is 8:20pm here, and it's 82 degrees. It will continue cooling down, but....
Alamo, now 82 degrees; the coming 5 days: 99/65 99/67 103/72 101/72 99/68
Alpine: Now 68 degrees, with all daytime temps this coming week cooler than Alamo. 92/63 92/65 92/65 94/63 90/63
Marfa: Also now 68 degrees, and day and night temps this coming week cooler than Alamo. 92/61 92/61 92/61 92/61 92/61
Fort Davis: 66 degrees; 90/59 90/61 88/61 90/61 88/61
I guess having the mountains so close here holds in more heat.
I doubt that it's the mountains, but I guess it could be. Is Alamogordo big enough to have a 'heat island'? Probably not...but with its AF base, it might. Or it could be just the way the weather patterns are set up right now. Anyway, it's an interesting question.
If you go to that site, the ASCI version usually loads much quicker. You'll see that all of the locations you mentioned in TX are normally a bit cooler than Alamogordo in the summer (day and night). They're all a little bit higher in elevation too.
As far as what is happening now:
i just went to the NWS forecast for Marfa. Their forecast is for a min tonight of 61. At 12:35 AM, it's actually 48! But the wind is light. Alamo is presently 82, but it was down to 72 a few hours ago until the wind picked up again. The weather pattern now (low pressure trough in the mid-upper troposphere along the west coast...high pressure ridge centered over TX) is not allowing the night-time winds to remain calm very long in Alamo. Presently, they're out of the south 16-20 mph. Over at Marfa, the much lighter winds aloft are allowing winds to diminish at low levels, letting cooler air to be undisturbed near the ground...unlike at Alamo where the winds are mixing the air and not letting cooler air settle. So, as catman suggested, what is going on now is a result of the ambient weather pattern. Still...over the course of the summer, days and nights are generally cooler in Alpine, Ft. Davis, and Marfa...than in Alamo.
You certainly took the backroads if you turned off from High Rolls and Mountain Park to go to Ruidoso.
I meant that I "turned off" the air conditioner in my car when I reached the forested area, not that I turned off the hiway. I stayed on the highway (paved roads) through Cloudcroft and the reservation before tying back into US-70 near Mescalero. I think that is state road 244? Anyway, it's a nice relaxing drive if you're not in a hurry and provides a nice diversion from the usual route I take through Tularosa.
PS I should say a relaxing but VERY CURVY route that requires constant attention to avoid overshooting on curves! There is a 90-degree bend at one point that is signed as being safe at 15mph that has seen NUMEROUS fatal crashes over the years - thereby giving it the "Deadman's Curve" name! Motorcyclists in particular seem to suffer a high rate of crashes there for some reason.
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