{"id":14055,"date":"2026-01-09T12:29:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/polar-jet-stream-brings-8-inches-of-snow-in-farmington\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:42:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:42:45","slug":"polar-jet-stream-brings-8-inches-of-snow-in-farmington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/polar-jet-stream-brings-8-inches-of-snow-in-farmington\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar jet stream brings 8 inches of snow in Farmington"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Light
Light streaks from City of Farmington snowplow truck illuminate the roundabout at Main Street and Orchard Avenue early morning on Friday. (Curtis Ray Benally\/Special to the Tri-City Record)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

New Mexico swung from its hottest December on record to a snowpacked January, as a polar jet stream storm delivered up to 8 inches of snow in Farmington and blanketed the state\u2019s mountains.<\/p>\n

Aztec reported 3.7 inches and Cedar Hill 2.5 inches, according to Clay Anderson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

Schools across San Juan County closed because of hazardous conditions, and Farmington police advised residents to stay home.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Animas River running high Jan. 9 in Berg Park, where snow covered most of the riverwalk trail.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A social media post described Farmington roads as \u201chazardous\u201d and urged residents to \u201cstay home unless you absolutely need to be out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farmington Police Spokeswoman Shanice Gonzales said there were no significant weather-caused traffic crashes.<\/p>\n

The San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office responded to eight weather-related crashes throughout the county, according to Rebekah Click, sheriff\u2019s spokeswoman.<\/p>\n

The Farmington Electric Utility Service reported outages in at least nine areas.<\/p>\n

About 2,700 customers in Farmington, north of Aztec and east of Bloomfield, were without electrical services at the peak of the outage, according to FEUS Director Hank Adair.<\/p>\n

The outages started about midnight as \u201cheavy, wet snow\u201d downed tree branches and affected power lines, Adair said.<\/p>\n

About eight linemen \u201cworked through the night in the worst conditions,\u201d Adair said.<\/p>\n

When they were sent home, \u201cwe augmented with 20 linemen to get out to power our community back up,\u201d Adair said.<\/p>\n

Adair gave his crews \u201ckudos,\u201d saying \u201cwhen the weather is the worst that\u2019s when they respond the best to get us back to reliable service.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Snow-covered
Snow-covered streets and sidewalks downtown Farmington on Friday. (Curtis Ray Benally\/Special to the Tri-City Record)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The storm moved in from the polar jet stream, Anderson said: \u201cThis polar jet stream kind of dove southeast from the Pacific Northwest and carved out a low-pressure system.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Pacific moisture and cold temperatures produced much-needed snowfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got these long-term drought conditions, so this is much-needed precipitation,\u201d Anderson said, adding it will not \u201cmake a huge difference, but it will be helpful in getting some moisture into the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The low-pressure system also brings lower temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story going forward from here is temperatures we haven\u2019t seen so far this winter season,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cIt will be unusually cold for what Farmington has been experiencing so far this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service predicts lows in the single digits, with \u201cpockets near the river that get down to near zero in the overnight hours,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Animas River running high Jan. 9 in Berg Park, where snow covered most of the riverwalk trail.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cOvernight temperature inversions\u201d will keep cold air near the surface, Anderson said.<\/p>\n

The storm moved across the state, dropping up to a foot of snow in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and causing road closures in the northeast, Anderson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so different from what we\u2019ve been seeing this winter season,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cWe probably have the warmest year on record in New Mexico 2025, with the warmest December of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Southwest Colorado, snowfall was expected to linger over mountain corridors Friday, tapering off in the afternoon. Overnight, temperatures in Cortez were expected to drop to about 14 degrees by 5 a.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"The
The winter geese bathing in the Animas River at Berg Park on June 9 after an overnight snowfall.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Farmington receives most snowfall in San Juan County<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-14055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14055"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19303,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14055\/revisions\/19303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14055"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}