It snows in N.M. ? I did not know that. It turned 80s here about a week ago and a lot of people planted their flowers. Then it snowed. 
actually a lot of trees started blooming too then the return to normal weather killed all the blooms. Gonna be a bad year for fruit here in the NE from what I hear. 
When I was working in Los alamos, it would snow and be ass cold in the winter...that area of northern NM is more "high altitude rain forest" than high desert...spend a June there and you'll see...massive T-storms pretty much every day between 1 and 3 pm..."monsoon season" as they called it.
Basically, anything on the leeward side of the mountains (in this case, the ring-wall mountains of the Valle grande caldera) gets significant precip when the air comes roaring up over the mountains--the air cools and becomes less dense, so the moisture condenses out and bam...precipitation. Since its all lower altitude dessert west of that, the sun bakes all the moisture out of the pacific, CA and AZ, the wind carries it east, and the NM mountains suck it out, leaving dry hot air for west Texas. At least from what I understand...same process that creates all the snow in the Sierra Nevada's and Rockies...it just happens in NM because between San Diego and NM, there isn't THAT much high (9-10kft+) mountains until you get to NM...if I remember correctly (I could be wrong)
