File:New Mexico (MODIS 2017-04-20).jpg

English: A mid-spring storm brought snow to the mountains of northern New Mexico in early April 2017. The Weather Channel reported a whopping 14 inches of new snow in Angel Fire, Colfax County, by 8 a.m. on April 7. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured a true-color image of the snow-capped mountains of New Mexico on April 15.

The winter snowfall in the mountains plays a critical role in the welfare of the arid southwest. It is a key element in the hydrological cycle, stockpiling precipitation during the winter and releasing it to the streams and rivers in the spring and early summer. The Rio Grande, the major river which courses through the state of New Mexico, acquires about 70 percent of its annual water flow from snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains.

According to the University of Arizona’s Southwest Climate Change Network, the general picture of snowpack for the 11 states in the western U.S., based on long-term monitoring of snow, shows a trend for earlier melting, rain replacing some snow storms, and less water in April snowpack. Also, dates of the first major spring snowmelt as well as the peak in streamflow are occurring earlier in the year by as much as four weeks. But the winter of 2016-2017 may be bucking the trend.

On April 19, the Southwest Farm Press reported that a monitoring site just north of the Colorado-New Mexico state line showed that as much snow has accumulated this year as had been reported since the station was established in the 1980s, and that this ample snow in northern New Mexico should mean the return of adequate water flow to both the Rio Chame and the Rio Grande Rivers this spring. Water managers are optimistic for irrigation efforts this spring but with caution. High temperatures in the mountains of southern New Mexico as well as the Sangre de Cristo range in the north of the state in March caused rapid and early melting of snowpack in those regions. Higher than normal temperatures in the upcoming months could offset the benefit of the strong snowpack.