NEW MEXICO (AP/KRQE) – New Mexico’s governor declared an emergency Thursday after a powerful winter storm left tens of thousands of people without power as heavy snow, fierce winds, and freezing temperatures marched across the northern two-thirds of the state and into Colorado.
Weather Information
The declaration opens up $1.5 million that will be split evenly between the New Mexico National Guard and other emergency response efforts.
Dozens of crews with Public Service Co. of New Mexico were mobilized to address widespread outages that had been reported overnight and in the early morning hours from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and beyond as the snow brought tree branches crashing down onto power lines.
The utility acknowledged frustrations and urged residents to be patient, saying there were about 19,000 people still affected by the outages Thursday evening. That was down from 50,000 earlier in the day.
“This really is an unprecedented storm in the fact that it came so earlier and so heavily while leaves were still on the trees. That has caused limbs to be much heavier that they would normally be,” PNM spokesman Jeff Buell said, adding that crews were dealing with hundreds of separate repair jobs in Albuquerque alone.
With more snow in the forecast, Buell said there could be additional outages into Friday.
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