New Mexico Snowpack: Percent of Normal by Station

Q: How many snow stations does New Mexico have?

29 active stations, of which 25 carry a 1991 to 2020 normal for a given calendar day and can therefore be given a percent of normal at all. They sit across 12 counties and 8 river basins, at elevations from 8,010 to 11,480 feet with a middle around 9,350. The highest is Santa Fe at 11,480 feet. Every figure on this page states which of those two counts it was computed from.

Today, from the agency file

Where New Mexico snowpack stands

Reading New Mexico stations from the agency files…

Every instrument in the state

New Mexico snow stations on the map

Reading the station map from the agency files…

Station by station

The New Mexico stations, lowest first

A station is one clearing. It reads the snow lying on its own pillow, and that can differ sharply from a slope a mile away and a thousand feet higher. Reading one station against its own past is far more informative than reading two stations against each other, which is why the last column gives each one its own percentile rather than a rank against its neighbours.

Reading station readings from the agency files…

A snow telemetry station in a forest clearing with a tall instrument mast, a steel precipitation gauge and a fenced snow pillow, surrounded by conifers under snow — One station, which is what every row in the table below is. A clearing, a mast, a precipitation gauge and a fenced pillow on the ground. The clearing matters: put the same instrument under a canopy and the trees intercept a large share of the snow before it ever lands. “Cloud Peak SNOTEL site in Montana” — USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service — Public Domain

By river basin

Which New Mexico basins are carrying the water

A southern snowpack lives on borrowed time. The sun angle in March at 35 degrees north is what the sun angle in April is at 45, so New Mexico begins losing snow while Montana is still gaining it, and a single warm week in February removes proportionally more here than anywhere further north.

The basin names below are the six digit hydrologic units the station records carry, named from the United States Geological Survey boundary dataset. New Mexico covers 8 of them across 12 counties. A basin appears once three or more of its stations are reporting.

Against its own record

This day, across the New Mexico record

A single percentage tells you where today sits against a thirty year median. It does not tell you whether that is unusual, and the two questions have genuinely different answers: a state can be at 70 percent of median in a year that is nowhere near its worst.

The water supply half, in the past tense

What the agency forecast for New Mexico in 2026

This is the completed record of a finished season. The Natural Resources Conservation Service issues seasonal runoff volume forecasts for 38 points in New Mexico, monthly through the winter and spring, and each issue supersedes the last. Below are the biggest of those points and how each forecast moved as the snow year revealed itself.

The current runoff forecast is published by the agency; the most recent issue shown here is months old by definition, because the series closes in early summer. For the forecast that applies now, go to the agency, or to NOAA Colorado Basin River Forecast Center for river stage.

Navajo Reservoir Inflow

April 1 to July 31 runoff volume, thousands of acre feet. Normal for that period 630. 4 issues on file for water year 2026.

01/01

02/01

03/01

04/01

normal 630

The bar is the range the agency published at each issue, from the ninety percent exceedence value at the bottom to the ten percent value at the top, with the fifty percent value marked. An exceedence probability is the chance the actual volume exceeds that number, so ninety is the low end and ten is the high end. The fifty percent figure moved from 495 on the January 1 issue to 145 on the April 1 issue, or 79 percent of normal down to 23 percent. Those are the agency’s numbers for a season that has finished; the current forecast is on the agency’s own site.

Rio Grande at Otowi Bridge

March 1 to July 31 runoff volume, thousands of acre feet. Normal for that period 565. 3 issues on file for water year 2026.

01/01

02/01

03/01

normal 565

The bar is the range the agency published at each issue, from the ninety percent exceedence value at the bottom to the ten percent value at the top, with the fifty percent value marked. An exceedence probability is the chance the actual volume exceeds that number, so ninety is the low end and ten is the high end. The fifty percent figure moved from 270 on the January 1 issue to 195 on the March 1 issue, or 48 percent of normal down to 35 percent. Those are the agency’s numbers for a season that has finished; the current forecast is on the agency’s own site.

Rio Grande at San Marcial

March 1 to July 31 runoff volume, thousands of acre feet. Normal for that period 345. 3 issues on file for water year 2026.

01/01

02/01

03/01

normal 345

The bar is the range the agency published at each issue, from the ninety percent exceedence value at the bottom to the ten percent value at the top, with the fifty percent value marked. An exceedence probability is the chance the actual volume exceeds that number, so ninety is the low end and ten is the high end. The fifty percent figure moved from 60 on the January 1 issue to 15.3 on the March 1 issue, or 17 percent of normal down to 4 percent. Those are the agency’s numbers for a season that has finished; the current forecast is on the agency’s own site.

El Vado Reservoir Inflow

April 1 to July 31 runoff volume, thousands of acre feet. Normal for that period 166. 4 issues on file for water year 2026.

01/01

02/01

03/01

04/01

normal 166

The bar is the range the agency published at each issue, from the ninety percent exceedence value at the bottom to the ten percent value at the top, with the fifty percent value marked. An exceedence probability is the chance the actual volume exceeds that number, so ninety is the low end and ten is the high end. The fifty percent figure moved from 107 on the January 1 issue to 40 on the April 1 issue, or 64 percent of normal down to 24 percent. Those are the agency’s numbers for a season that has finished; the current forecast is on the agency’s own site.

Los Pinos R nr Ortiz

April 1 to September 30 runoff volume, thousands of acre feet. Normal for that period 61. 4 issues on file for water year 2026.

01/01

02/01

03/01

04/01

normal 61

The bar is the range the agency published at each issue, from the ninety percent exceedence value at the bottom to the ten percent value at the top, with the fifty percent value marked. An exceedence probability is the chance the actual volume exceeds that number, so ninety is the low end and ten is the high end. The fifty percent figure moved from 40 on the January 1 issue to 11 on the April 1 issue, or 66 percent of normal down to 18 percent. Those are the agency’s numbers for a season that has finished; the current forecast is on the agency’s own site.

Pecos R nr Pecos

March 1 to July 31 runoff volume, thousands of acre feet. Normal for that period 53. 3 issues on file for water year 2026.

01/01

02/01

03/01

normal 53

The bar is the range the agency published at each issue, from the ninety percent exceedence value at the bottom to the ten percent value at the top, with the fifty percent value marked. An exceedence probability is the chance the actual volume exceeds that number, so ninety is the low end and ten is the high end. The fifty percent figure moved from 22 on the January 1 issue to 16 on the March 1 issue, or 42 percent of normal down to 30 percent. Those are the agency’s numbers for a season that has finished; the current forecast is on the agency’s own site.

Volumes are in thousands of acre feet, in the units the agency publishes. Each point’s forecast period is printed above its chart, because the period is not the same everywhere: the Southwest runs off earlier and its forecasts are issued for an earlier window. Volumes from different periods are not comparable.

Reading the number

What the New Mexico snowpack number shows

The peak date on this page is a median of medians. Across the 25 New Mexico stations that publish one, the individual median peak dates span 84 days, from February 4 to April 29. A low station on a south face and a high one in a north facing cirque are in different climates, and averaging them produces a date that describes neither.

4 of the 29 New Mexico stations have no 1991 to 2020 median at all, nearly always because they were installed too recently to have thirty years behind them. A station with no normal cannot be a percentage of one, so it appears on the map and in the table with its measurement and no percentage, and it is left out of the state total. The panel at the top of this page prints both counts.

New Mexico’s forecast points publish for a March to July window in many cases rather than the April to July one used further north, because its runoff arrives earlier. The runoff table names the window on every row.

How New Mexico sits against the rest of the network. Its middle station is at 9,350 ft, against 10,275 ft in Colorado and 1,345 ft in Alaska. Elevation is not a proxy for depth: the deepest packs in the country sit on some of the lowest stations, because a maritime climate delivers far more water per storm than a continental one.

A wide brown river running high and fast between forested banks with the current carrying debris in the foreground — Snowmelt in a channel. Between the measurement above and the water here sit spring temperature, rain falling on snow, dust darkening the surface and how dry the soil was before winter. That gap is why this page publishes the measurement and links the agencies that publish the forecast. “Yellowstone flood event 2022 Lamar River above the Confluence with the Yellowstone River” — Yellowstone National Park (NPS) — Public domain

Where to go for the official answer

Who publishes New Mexico water supply

New Mexico Office of the State Engineer

The office that administers New Mexico water rights and the interstate compacts on the Rio Grande, the Pecos and the San Juan.

Link loaded and answered on 2026-09-04.

NOAA Colorado Basin River Forecast Center

The National Weather Service river forecast centre covering New Mexico. River stage and flow forecasts are its product, and it is the place to look when the question is about a specific river rather than about snow.

Link loaded and answered on 2026-09-04.

Common questions

New Mexico snowpack FAQ

When does New Mexico snowpack usually peak?

Around March 10, taking the middle of the 25 New Mexico stations that publish a median peak date. That is a median of medians and no single basin hits it: across the state those station level peak dates run from February 4 to April 29, which is 84 days of spread inside one state, driven almost entirely by elevation and aspect. The typical melt out across the same stations is April 16. All of these are medians drawn from roughly four decades of record and none of them is a statement about this year.

How many snow stations does New Mexico have?

What is a normal New Mexico snowpack?

In water rather than in depth, the middle New Mexico station typically peaks at about 8.3 inches of water, and the deepest, Taos Powderhorn at 11,020 feet, typically peaks at 20 inches. Nationally the range across the 12 covered states runs from 6.7 inches in Arizona to 32 in Washington. A station’s own median is far more useful than a state one, which is why the table on this page gives every station its own.

Where does New Mexico snowmelt go?

A southern snowpack lives on borrowed time. The sun angle in March at 35 degrees north is what the sun angle in April is at 45, so New Mexico begins losing snow while Montana is still gaining it, and a single warm week in February removes proportionally more here than anywhere further north. The basins on this page are the six digit hydrologic units the federal station records carry, named from the United States Geological Survey boundary dataset, and the largest of them by station count is Upper Rio Grande.

Who publishes the official New Mexico water supply forecast?

The Natural Resources Conservation Service publishes seasonal runoff volume forecasts for 38 forecast points in New Mexico, and NOAA Colorado Basin River Forecast Center publishes river forecasts; both are linked from this page. What this page shows from that programme is the completed 2026 water year record, in the past tense, with the issue date printed on every number, so you can see how a forecast moved across a season. On Navajo Reservoir Inflow, the fifty percent forecast went from 495 to 145 thousand acre feet between the January 1 and April 1 issues, against a normal of 630. For the current forecast, go to the agency.

Does this page tell me whether New Mexico is heading into a drought?

No. Snowpack is one input to that question and this page publishes the input. The others are how dry the soil was before the snow fell, how fast the spring warms, whether rain falls on the snow, and how much dust settles on the surface and darkens it. Two identical New Mexico snowpacks in two different years can deliver very different amounts of water for those reasons, which is precisely why the agency issues its runoff forecast monthly and revises it, as the 2026 arcs further down this page show rather than computing it once from a snow number. For New Mexico drought conditions themselves, the United States Drought Monitor is the published record and it is a different measurement from this one.

Why do some New Mexico stations have no percentage?

Two reasons, and the page distinguishes them. 4 of the 29 New Mexico stations have no 1991 to 2020 median at all, almost always because they were installed too recently to have thirty years behind them, and a station with no normal cannot be a percentage of one. Separately, a station reporting exactly zero water against a normal of an inch or more is held out, because in this network that pattern is usually a failed sensor. Measured against the agency’s own quality flags for March 15, 2026, that rule held out 12 New Mexico stations and the agency had independently flagged 11 of them as not valid.

How does New Mexico snowpack compare with the rest of the West?

On elevation, New Mexico’s middle station sits at 9,350 feet against 10,275 in Colorado and 1,345 in Alaska, and elevation is not a proxy for depth: the deepest packs in the country sit on some of the lowest stations, because a maritime climate delivers far more water per storm. On timing, New Mexico peaks around March 10 against March 2 in Arizona and April 20 in Montana. The hub page puts all 12 side by side.

Dry pale grassland stretching to low hills under a hot bright sky with bare ground showing between the tussocks — Dry rangeland below the mountains. In the Southwest the interval between a snowpack peak and the driest part of the year is short, which is why the region’s runoff forecasts are issued for an earlier window than the northern ones and why its melt out dates come first in the network. “Drought Mitigation - Park Land Rancher Ned Wood uses Solar Powered Well System (20150724-NRCS-LSC-0078)” — USDAgov — Public domain

The same water, elsewhere on this site

Snow, melt and what happens after

New Mexico droughtWhat the soil and the reservoirs already lost. Dry soil before winter absorbs melt that would otherwise reach a river.New Mexico river levelsWhat this snow becomes, months later, at gauges on the rivers these basins feed.New Mexico ski seasonWhether the snow is skiable, which is a resort question about groomed terrain rather than a water one.Mountain passesSeveral of these stations sit at passes, which is why the same instruments turn up on both pages.

Avalanche forecasts for the layers inside this same snowpack are issued by named forecasters at the avalanche centres: avalanche forecasts by state.

Other Southern Rockies states with a network

Sources for this page

USDA NRCS Air and Water Database, daily snow water equivalent filesfederal, public domain Read 2026-09-04.
One file per calendar day carrying every station’s entire period of record for that day. Measured at 102,474 bytes and 0.17 seconds for September 3 and 192,640 bytes for March 15, keyless and open to any origin. This is the source of every reading on these pages.
USDA NRCS Air and Water Database REST APIfederal, public domain Read 2026-09-04.
The documented API behind the same database. Used to build the station inventory, to verify that the daily files decode correctly, and as the fallback when the daily files cannot be reached.
USDA NRCS report generatorfederal, public domain Read 2026-09-04.
The one source that emits NRCS’s own labelled percent of median. Used to prove our figures reproduce the agency’s: all 118 Colorado stations matched exactly on value, median and percentage for March 15, 2026. Too slow to read live, at 8.9 seconds for one state.
USDA NRCS interactive station mapfederal, public domain Read 2026-09-04.
The agency’s own live map of every station it operates. This is where a reader goes for the official current picture, and every page in this vertical links it.
USGS Watershed Boundary Datasetfederal, public domain Read 2026-09-04.
NRCS station records carry a bare twelve digit hydrologic unit code and no name. The basin names on these pages come from the USGS boundary dataset, which named all 96 six digit basins in the station inventory.
California Department of Water Resources, California Data Exchange Centerstate agency, linked not reproduced Read 2026-09-04.
California’s own snow survey and the authority for California snowpack. Its data cannot be read from a browser on this site because it sends no cross origin header on any endpoint tested, including the preflight. It is linked rather than reproduced, and the California page explains where the two networks disagree.

Snow water equivalent measurements on this page are federal records collected by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and are in the public domain. Percentages use the 1991 to 2020 normals period. The New Mexico and basin totals are our arithmetic on those measurements and are not agency published indices. Water supply forecasts and runoff projections come from the agencies named above. Every state with a snowpack page →
Hero image: “Drought Mitigation - Park Land Rancher Ned Wood uses Solar Powered Well System (20150724-NRCS-LSC-0078)” — USDAgov — Public domain