Record and near-record continues through Wednesday across New Mexico. Rain chances increase starting Thursday, cooling temperatures off.
It’s another hot day across New Mexico with high temperatures climbing to near-records this afternoon. There’s a little bit better monsoon moisture moving through northern New Mexico today, bringing scattered to isolated showers and storms from Gallup and Grants to the northern mountains and east to Clayton, along with southern Colorado. These showers will fizzle out overnight as temperatures will be warm once again.
Wednesday will be another very hot day with more record and near-record high temperatures. A few more showers and storms will develop across western and northern New Mexico though. The strong monsoon high pressure system that’s been responsible for this heat will slide east starting Wednesday night, drawing up monsoon moisture into western New Mexico Wednesday night. This could bring rain to start the day Thursday in western parts of the state.
With the plume of monsoon moisture moving into more of New Mexico Wednesday night, scattered to widespread showers and storms will develop along and west of the central mountain chain Thursday afternoon. Rain chances will increase through Saturday as more moisture continues to move in. The moisture will finally bring high temperatures back down closer to normal for this time of year by the weekend.
There is some differences between forecast models starting this weekend. There is consensus that temperatures will stay closer to normal into early next week and rain chances will continue for parts of New Mexico, but there is uncertainty as to where.