Weather Information 

Note: Underlined HEADER names are links to the topic webpage.

NWS Forecast Office Albuquerque, NM 

The National Weather Service Forecast Office (NWSFO) in Albuquerque employs nearly 30 meteorologists, hydrometeorological technicians (HMT's), electronics technicians, and an administrative assistant to serve the meteorological needs of the people of New Mexico. This office is part of the Southern Region of the NWS, which serves New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The scope of the programs and services of the Albuquerque office are exceeded nowhere in the Southern Region. 

Tours/Other Services: Tours and outreach visits are available, when staffing and weather permit, for school groups 5th grade and older and for other various groups and educational organizations. Call (505)243-0702, Monday through Friday, 8 am to 4 p.m. to check on availability.  

NWS Forecast Office Pueblo, CO 

NWS Forecast Office El Paso, TX 

SKYWARN NWS ALBUQUERQUE

CALLSIGN: WX5ABQ

The NWS Amateur Radio Program

The NWS Albuquerque office, located on the west side of the Albuquerque Sunport airport, has both 2M and 70CM amateur radio. Vanity call WX5ABQ (WX weather, region 5, and ABQ international identifier for Albuquerque airport and NWS office) is normally used whenever the station is on the air.

For SKYWARN, the NWS offices primarily use the MegaLink repeater system which provides coverage into most of the NWS office's county warning areas. The Albuquerque office may also use several of the Upper Rio FM Society repeaters (146.940 or 146.900) as well as other local repeaters from near Santa Fe (147.200 or 147.300), Los Alamos (145.190), Bernalillo-Rio Rancho (147.100), Belen (146.700) and Socorro (146.680) whenever severe weather threatens along the Rio Grande Valley and over west central New Mexico.

Although we do have a number of staff licensed to operate the amateur stations at all three field offices, there are times when these licensed personnel are not on duty and times when other duties prevent us from monitoring the amateur radio. A guest operator may then be called in to assist us. If you can't raise us directly on the radio, you may check station status or request station activation with a phone call to the toll-free number at the Albuquerque office: 1-888-386-7637 or via the Upper Rio FM auto-patch using codes 365 or 9365 (after hours emergency phone patch). For more general SKYWARN information for West Texas, click here. 

Spotters can contribute snow and road condition reports as well as heavy rain and severe thunderstorm reports. We encourage both home location reporting and reports from spotters that may be traveling across the state. 

Have you designated a central contract point within a amateur spotter group? It's usually best to have one to two folks designated as primary group contact points. This helps us request spotter activation and then manage reports during an event. It's left up to the group to decide whether to communicate as a group on a local repeater or simplex and then have someone relay reports to us via MegaLINK, other repeater or by phone. However, please let us know which frequency the group uses so we can monitor if possible.