Cold Snap Headed For El Paso Is Nothing Compared To These Winter Storms

A cold front will move into El Paso next week. While it will make things kinda chilly for the Borderland, it won't be near as bad as some past winter weather.

El Paso enjoys a pretty mild climate and our winters tend to be fairly calm and not too bad when it comes to snow, ice, freezing temperatures, etc.

We have had some doozies though, including some record setters and a few cold snaps that "broke" the city. When real winter hits, we tend to be a bit under prepared.

Next weeks 10 day forecast from weather.com calls for some chilli-ness in El Paso with highs only reaching 60 degrees a couple of times.

Lows will dip into the low 20's, there will be some wind and a drop or two of rain are also on their way to the 915.

Sounds like a pretty big cold front, by our standards anyway, but next week won't be near as bad as some of the past winter weather that El Paso has seen.

The "Big Freeze of 2011" for example brought temps to the Borderland that didn't rise above freezing for 78 straight hours. This, obviously, messed some stuff up.

Water and gas utilities suffered from broken pipes and mains, with water leaks flooding several homes. At El Paso Electric, all eight primary power generators failed due to freezing conditions. While energy was brought into the area from elsewhere on the grid, rolling blackouts were implemented during peak electric use hours. - KVIA

In 1987, El Paso saw something it rarely does, snow .... and a lot of it. 22.4 inches of snow was dumped on the Sun City between December 13th and December 14th.

My friends and I were jumping off the roof into snow drifts, they were that deep in places. 32.5 inches fell in all between November and February that year.

Some roads were impassable and parts of I-10 and some overpasses were shut down. Trans Mountain Road and the El Paso International Airport were closed completely.  A few days prior, on December 11th, the high had been 76 degrees. 

Then there was El Paso's coldest day ever. On January 11th, 1962, the temperature dropped to -8 ... 8 BELOW zero.

It was so cold, the water in the fountain in San Jacinto Plaza froze, trapping a live alligator in the ice.  Seriously.

You can see a pic halfway through this article.