In New Mexico, it is is very common for on-line, tv, and radio weather reports to seem to be very inaccurate, as they cannot take into account the major differences in climate often within a few miles. At one time, WeatherUnderground had a reporting station on the local grade school, which was removed during the expansion to add grades seven and eight; they then had a station at house only a few miles from our home. We were getting localized weather reports, which more often than not were not the same, sometimes not even closely related to those from the airport or even WeatherUnderground's station in town.
Now, the only governmental weather station is at the Santa Fe Regional Airport. It is not at all unusual for that station to report snow in Santa Fe while the suni is shining at home, perhaps ten miles apart. (I don't know for certain, as one cannot get from one to the other in anything resembling a straight line.)
Not long after we moved here, we were watching television one morning to see if the school bus route, or even the entire local school system, would be closed due to snow. There was no such announcement until I called the transportation director to report that I had just measured the snow depth as sixteen inches, at the time that the city of Santa Fe had noting even close to that. Based on my call, schools, and practically everything else closed for the day.
I found out the reason for the heavy snow around us, a typical New Mexico localized climate: The storm was located on the east slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountains; we were not far from the west slope. What had happened was that the storm moved through Glorieta Pass, rather close to us, and when it reached the west side of the range, the change in climate was such that it snowed very intensely over a relatively small area, including the land around our home.
