Video captures microburst in Las Cruces on Sunday

LAS CRUCES – The National Weather Service confirmed Wednesday that the storm that hit the Elks Club area Sunday evening was indeed a microburst.

Laren Reynolds with the NWS out of Santa Teresa said based on photographs and eyewitness accounts, Warning Coordination Meteorologist Jason Laney confirmed that the storm was a wet microburst. A microburst is “a localized column of sinking air, a large downdraft within a thunderstorm,” Reynolds said. She explained that the column gains speed as it accelerates toward the ground, then spreads out as it hits the ground, resulting in high wind speeds.

Reynolds said that a powerful downdraft gained speed and resulted in the roughly 70-miles-per-hour winds that hit the neighborhood about 7 p.m. Sunday.

The closest site gauging wind speed recorded 84 miles per hour winds, but Reynolds said that is not necessarily representative of the speeds from the microburst because the site is at a higher elevation than the area where the storm was.

“We don’t have an exact site that gauges wind speed right underneath that storm,” Reynolds said. “Is it possible that they were stronger? Absolutely. But at the same time we’re giving the best estimation we can based on the data that we have.”

George De La Torre, manager of Strategic Communications and Community Engagement for El Paso Electric, said the storm damaged at least 15 distribution and transmission poles in the area, which impacted about 7,500 customers. Most customers had their power restored by Monday morning, but De La Torre said a remaining 84 customers were without power until 6:45 p.m. that day.

More:Storm with hurricane-force winds snaps power lines in Las Cruces

De La Torre said a similar situation happened in Van Horn, Texas on Aug. 17. Ten poles were knocked down by recorded wind speeds of 100 miles per hour due to a microburst.

A number of residents in the Elks Drive neighborhood reported that the storm uprooted trees, overturned road signs and snapped poles.

James Chavez, a resident of the Parkhill Drive area, told the Sun-News Monday that a trampoline was blown into this truck by the winds Sunday evening, denting and scratching his truck. This particular trampoline was not the only one to be blown away in the storm. On Wednesday Chavez said the owner of the trampoline never came forward, so he “cut up and disposed” of it.

Leah Romero is a fellow with the New Mexico Local News Fund and can be reached at lromero@lcsun-news.com or @rromero_leah on Twitter.