ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – It has been an active weather day in New Mexico. Intense winds have left behind a trail of destruction, and thousands of people were left without power for most of the day. Winds reached up to 75 miles per hour in the Albuquerque metro and brought some damage with them.
The roof of Hurricane’s Café in Nob Hill got blown off by the wind. “Well, we’re in the middle of our Sunday lunch rush. Wind was howling and we heard a loud crash above the kitchen. Everybody started running out frantic,” said Bill Mascarenas, owner of Hurricane’s Café. “I came up to check the roof and another big gust came and another big chunk came flying. So when I went back inside and I just saw that the roof basically just peeled off with some of the wind.”
Hurricane’s wasn’t the only one affected by the winds today. At the construction site of the new Chick-fil-A near Coors and Rio Bravo, a trailer for work site staff completely flipped on its side. One apartment complex saw one of its carports blown over, and at the Rio Grande Baptist Church, the winds were so bad that it caused a tree to fall on a woman’s car during the service.
The wind caused so much damage that first responders were responding to calls all day. “Since midnight of today, we have received 50 calls throughout the county. Not all of those being just weather related but that is definitely a much higher trend on a daily basis than we’d typically see,” said Lt. Robert Arguelles with Bernalillo County Fire Department.
The winds caused power outages impacting thousands. According to the PNM website, at around 1:30 p.m. this afternoon, 43,000 customers were without power. Late on Sunday night, Feb. 26, around 4,000 customers are still without power.
Crews will be working into the night to restore power for the remaining customers affected in the Northeast part of the city and Valencia County. They are requesting that those affected make their backyards available to crews can have access to power lines and transformers.
