Tularosa Wind and Hail Damage Survey -- WOA, MIC

Event date/time: May 28, 2008 approx 4:45 -- 5:45 p.m.

Tularosa, NM (Otero County)

**Supplementary Note:**

I stopped at the Border Patrol Checkpoint near White Sands. One agent
informed me that hail from the size of pennies to a little larger than
golf balls, irregular in shape, fell at his house in Alamogordo around
5:10 p.m. His residence is within a block of the WalMart, which is
located at the intersection of Delaware Street and 1^st^ Street in
Alamogordo. This occurred in conjunction with the south-split cell.

**NOTES:**

Upon entering Tularosa from the south on Highway 54/70, I saw no
evidence of any wind, hail or flood damage. There was no discernible
window, roofing or tree damage, and no debris fall or dispersion of
litter or debris.

Damage was noted beginning on Highway 54/70 at Fresno Street. I turned
east and observed a power crew removing broken branches from affected
lines on Fresno Street, and larger branches on the ground both beneath
the work crew and along the street at adjacent residences. There was a
large amount of leaf fall in the street, on rooftops and in yards.

I proceeded east another two blocks on Fresno Street and ran out of all
evidence of damage. I returned to the damage demarcation, two blocks
east of Highway 54/70 on Fresno Street, then turned north. I ran out of
damage a block south of Highway 70, where it splits eastward from
Highway 54. Clearly, the extreme damage photographed and sent to the WFO
had occurred elsewhere.

I proceeded three blocks west of Highway 54/70 on Bosque Street, where I
encountered a woman clearing branches from the front of her house. She
had been without electric, telephone and cable services from around 5:00
p.m. on the 28^th^ to 5:20 a.m. on the 29^th^. The electricity went
first, followed by cable, then telephone. She said a strong west wind
broke her large tree in the backyard (which she said was "old and
diseased but still pretty"), and that hail a bit larger than golf balls,
but slushy, fell and did no damage. She also relayed a report by PNM
crews that "a tornado caused a lot of damage between La Luz and Railroad
Streets." She was animated about not getting any kind of warning. "What
good does it do me if you people issue a warning and I can't get it
without power, phone or cable?"

Two blocks further west from her residence is a large municipal complex
that includes elementary and middle schools, parking lots, a football
field and an adjacent baseball facility. Only very minor structural
damage was noted to the roof of the football facility, but large
branches littered the adjacent roadways. A crew was out picking up the
branches and making the roadways passable.

I drove further west to the intersection of La Luz and West 4^th^
Streets, which is the fulcrum between the school complex (to the
southeast) and the baseball facility (to the northwest). I turned south
on La Luz and witnessed another crew removing branches from the road
surface. From La Luz west, a very large amount of leafage, small twigs
and debris littered the ground and roadways (making the street slick, in
fact). Evidence supported larger, more damaging hail and accompanying
wind on the scale of 60 mph or greater, as suggested by ground
striations and debris impacted on fencing.

I bounded the damage field by proceeding south on La Luz to find the
south end of the damage, which ended 1.6 miles south of the La Luz/West
4^th^ Street intersection. I returned north on La Luz to Higuera Road
(1.4 miles south of W. 4^th^ Street) and turned west, encountering heavy
leaf- and branch-fall that had not yet been removed from the road
surface. Railroad Street, which runs north-south 1.5 miles west of La
Luz, seemed roughly to delineate the westward boundary of damage, with
minor tree damage and small outbuildings overturned less than ¼ mile
west of Railroad Street near the Higuera Road intersection. A mile north
of the Railroad/Higuera Road intersection, near the intersection of
Railroad and Dirt, I photographed ground striations and pockmarks caused
by a combination of a SSW wind and hail approximately the size of
quarters. Damage increased further north on Railroad Street, however,
and larger (non-reinforced) outbuildings and fences were destroyed by a
SSW wind 1.9 miles north of the Railroad/Higuera Road intersection, or
about ¼ mile south of the Hwy 54/Railroad Street intersection.

At the Railroad Street/Hwy 54 intersection I re-entered the highway
heading south toward Tularosa. Within 0.5 mi, at mile marker 81, I
photographed a new wooden fence toppled by a southwest wind. However,
adjacent grape vines received no visible damage. Further south, at mile
marker 80, I saw moderate damage to grapes with some on the ground and
moderate leafage on the ground, but no visible damage east of the
highway. I proceeded back into town, turned east on Highway 70 and saw
no damage of any kind. Thereafter, I returned to the area bounded by La
Luz on the east, Railroad on the west and Higuera Road on the south.
This area seemed to receive the most extreme damage.

I performed a street-by-street assessment of W. 1^st^ Street (which is a
block north of Higuera Road) north through W. 7^th^ Street, and saw
widespread severe damage caused by a combination of large hail and very
strong wind. Evidently, this is the locale the PNM crew identified as
having been damaged by a tornado. The damage was caused by divergent
straight-line winds of between 70 and 80 mph in combination with hail
golf ball to baseball in size, based on broken windows, dents in siding
and destruction of roofing and trees. Wind was from the SSW along 1^st^,
2^nd^, 3^rd^ and 4^th^ Streets, but more from the south along 5^th^
through 7^th^ Streets. At the north fringe of this area, near the
intersection of Sioux and Tule Gate, an unanchored mobile home was off
its foundation. About 150 yards west of this location, a
brick-and-mortar house sustained garage damage, with the south-facing
window blown in and the garage door blown out. The homeowner would not
allow me to photograph his house. Other mobile homes had been flipped
and rolled south-to-north between 4^th^ and 5^th^ Streets one to two
blocks west of La Luz. All were unanchored.

Based on the evidence, this incident likely occurred in conjunction with
a wet microburst (downburst), accompanied by heavy hail fall at its
core, with divergent west wind at the south fringe and south wind along
its northern boundary. The most intense SSW wind existed at the core of
the downburst between W. 1^st^ and W. 6^th^ Streets and bounded on the
west by Railroad Street and on the east by La Luz, west of downtown
Tularosa.