Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Welcome to Monsoon Season.
Yes, there is sarcasm in the term since our region barely averages 16 inches of rain annually.
But most of whatever moisture we receive this year will probably fall between now and September — Monsoon Season.
Historically, well over 65 percent of the rainfall recorded in eastern New Mexico arrives in these upcoming five months.
The National Weather Service began keeping our records in the early 1900s. One of the most noteworthy:
• Clovis received 5.26 inches of rain on Sept. 6, 1957, most of it in a few hours. Hundreds of sparrows drowned. Motor boats appeared on the high school football field. The football game had to be postponed.
That’s amazing considering the city has twice gone three consecutive months without a drop of moisture. And twice — in 1917 and 1943 — it received less than 8 inches of rain over an entire year.
The wettest month ever recorded in eastern New Mexico was May of 1914.
That’s when Portales saw 12.67 inches of rain.
Talk about a blessing ... in the form of a curse.
Headlines in the Portales Herald-Times included:
• “Severe Hail and Rain Storm Sweeps Over This Section Doing Thousands of Dollars Worth of Damage”
• “Fruits, Vegetables And Other Crops Are Destroyed”
• Stock Killed, Other Damage — Telephone Company Suffers, House Struck by Lightning — Traffic Stopped.”
“That was some rain, yes,” the Herald-Times reported on May 21, 1914.
“Virtually everything in the path of the storm, in the way of vegetables, fruits and crops, was destroyed. ... Nearly every telephone in Portales was put out of commission ... The railroad had one bridge near Elida washed out ... Quite a few cattle, hogs and chickens were killed.”
As for the blessing:
“The silver lining in this instance is the fact that hundreds of rabbits and prairie dogs were killed,” the paper reported.
The Herald-Times, which published from 1904 to 1916, was an unashamed booster of the Portales Valley.
Its rain story concluded:
“Grass will ... be extremely fine in a short time. Some have said that benefits received will overbalance the damage done.
“The most optimistic people on the face of the globe are these western folks.
“Come to the golden, glorious west.”
David Stevens writes about regional history for Clovis Media Inc. Sign up to receive historic newspaper pages by emailing:
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