‘Mixed blessing’: Fire-plagued New Mexico faces excessive monsoon rain

While the rainfall is welcome news in a landscape parched by widespread drought and charred by historically large fires, it may be too much of a good thing.

“Excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations,” wrote the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, whichThe flash flood watch zones include the areas where New Mexico’s two largest blazes on record still rage — the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak and Black fires.The rain is “a mixed blessing,” said Andrew Mangham, the senior service hydrologist at the Weather Service’s Albuquerque office.

That’s the case this week as the monsoon kicks in a bit early. The Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center has highlighted most of New Mexico within a level 2 out of 4 risk zone for excessive rainfall and flash flooding.“Stream flows are much above normal to high in places across much of New Mexico, southeast Arizona and far Southwest Texas from recent rainfall,” the agency wrote.

The cool conditions and elevated threats of torrential rainfall and flooding contrast sharply with the effects of the “heat dome” sprawled across most of the eastern two-thirds of the Lower 48, but the opposing phenomena are related. Moisture entrained northwest and wrapping northward on the backside of the clockwise-spinning high is being drawn over New Mexico. That, coupled with an unstable atmosphere — one that fosters rising pockets of air — will gel into sporadic thunderstorms.

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