New Mexico Setting New Records With Drought

New Mexico is slipping further into drought, having marked the driest two-year period in nearly 120 years of record-keeping.

National weather forecasters and water managers shared the latest statistics on New Mexico’s devastatingly dry conditions during a meeting Tuesday. They say the last 12- and 24-month periods have eclipsed even those dry times of the early 20th century and the 1950s.

For the first four months of this year, New Mexico has seen less than half of its normal precipitation, with communities in the south and along the Rio Grande Valley seeing even less.

Forecasters say the Santa Fe and Socorro areas have received just 17 percent of their normal snow and rainfall so far this year.

And with the snowpack now melted, officials say there is nothing to replenish the state’s reservoirs.