Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
If you feel like you’ve weathered a particularly chilly storm of late, it’s because you have.
Sunday and Monday were the coldest days in the Clovis-Portales area in 13 months.
The last time we felt temperatures cooler than the single digits registered to start this week was Dec. 22-24, 2022. Those lows were minus-1, minus-1 and 6 degrees, respectively, as recorded at the Agricultural Science Center north of Clovis.
The coldest temperature recorded at the ag center in all of 2023 was 10 degrees, which happened five times.
Hamza Badrari is a research assistant at the ag center, which is located 13 miles north of Clovis. He provided the center’s 2023 weather records early this month. They’re a fun contrast with those from 2022.
• The coldest day recorded around here in the past two-plus years was on Feb. 4, 2022, when the low temperature was minus-4 degrees. The average low temp that month was 18.3 degrees. We had six days that month in the single digits and only two – 34 degrees on Feb. 1 and 33 on Feb. 16 – when the low temp was above freezing. Feel warmer now?
• Last year saw plenty of warm days – 14 of them had temperatures reach 100 or more. By comparison, we had just seven days of 100 or more in 2022. The hottest day last year was 103. That happened three times.
• The top weather news from 2023 came in the form of moisture. The ag center recorded 23.99 inches of it, mostly from May through December. May 2023 – mostly remembered for the hail/wind storm that knocked out windows all over the region – saw 10.26 inches of rain. Half the months of 2023 recorded well over an inch of rain.
• Historically, the region sees fewer than 18 inches of moisture and too many times we can’t even total 10 inches. In 2022, the wettest day was July 30 when 1.79 inches of rain fell. The rest of the year failed to collect 8 inches total. Two weeks of May 2023 saw 9.36 inches of rain; all of 2022 had just 9.78 inches.
• Our driest years are typically January through April and that has been true the past two years as well. The first four months of 2022 saw .77 of an inch at the ag center; the first months of 2023 saw .46 of an inch. May can’t come soon enough … maybe without the wind and hail this time.
David Stevens is editor and publisher of Clovis Media Inc. Email him at:
