It’s spring

Today is the first day since November 13th that the temperature has risen above 60ºF officially in Albuquerque. It’s 62 63 and sunny. Convertible weather.

The official low here this winter was 12ºF on December 4th, a record for the date. The temperature dropped into the teens just eight times; six of those mornings were in December.

(The all-time record low temperature for Albuquerque is minus 17ºF on January 6, 1971. Yikes!)

There has been exactly 1 inch of precipitation since Halloween; 2.6 inches of it as snow. (It takes about 10 inches of snow, on average, to equal one inch of precipitation.)

We probably had about eight or nine inches of snow altogether at Casa NewMexiKen a thousand feet above the valley. I don’t think any of it lasted more than a few hours except as patches in shady spots. A couple of times it snowed an inch or two, then melted, then snowed another inch or two, then melted, all on the same day. That’s ideal. I’ve always thought it was nice to watch snow fall, to admire its beauty when everything is covered, then to magically wish it away. More often than not, that’s snow in Albuquerque.