National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Extremely Critical Fire Weather in New Mexico & West Texas; Severe Thunderstorms for the Great Plains

Extremely critical fire weather (Level 3 of 3) including high winds and very dry conditions is expected this afternoon and evening for central and southern New Mexico into far west Texas. Isolated to scattered severe thunderstorms are possible mainly this evening into early morning Monday across parts of the Great Plains. Large to very large hail, damaging winds, and a few tornadoes possible. Read More >

Below is a listing of the climate records on New Year's Day for Rapid City, Gillette, Lead, Winner, Lemmon, Sundance, Spearfish, Newcastle, Hot Springs, and Custer. Record high temperatures have reached the 50s to mid-60s. Of these sites, Lemmon has been the coldest, dipping down to -31 degrees in 1928. In 1970, Lead had a whopping 35 inches of snow on the ground.

Also listed is the weather data for the past ten New Year's Days in Rapid City and Gillette. Very little snow has fallen on January 1st for the past decade, though minor accumulations of snow occurred in 2022 and 2023. Temperatures on New Year's Day in 2022 were very chilly, with highs in the single digits to teens and lows below zero. Last year, we experienced a relatively mild and dry January 1st.