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LAS CRUCES - For 91 hours and 39 minutes, until 1:11 p.m. Friday, temperatures in Las Cruces were below freezing, according to the National Weather Service.
But by Monday, it could all be a distant, cold memory.
El Paso Electric announced Friday evening that it planned for no more outages and that, finally, the frozen Newman and Rio Grande power plants were slowly coming back into service. However, natural gas pressure remained at an "all-time low," said City Manager Robert Garza, and customers were still being urged to minimize electric usage, if possible.
A state of emergency remains in effect, but by Friday evening, no serious injuries or deaths were reported throughout New Mexico. Across the county, though, residents were dealing with other, smaller headaches.
As pipes began to thaw late Friday afternoon, some 20 elderly residents of the 42-unit St. Genevieve Village on Mulberry Avenue were preparing for evacuation, to University Terrace Good Samaritan Village, because of flooding from burst water lines, said Shirley Judson, disaster specialist for the Southwestern New Mexico Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Hundreds of motorists, meanwhile, prepared for a visit to the body shop after sliding through iced-over intersections, drifting off roads or tapping each other in blacked-out intersections. New Mexico State Police assisted
"Many other minor crashes - possibly more than 100 - have occurred since Tuesday evening, but the parties involved simply exchanged info and no report was generated," Trujillo said.
Other residents waited to return to school, or work, or to finish business they had planned to complete at city or county facilities, not knowing until after dark Friday if the electric grid would be stable enough to do so Monday.
"Clearly, we lost three days of productivity," said county spokesman Jess Williams. "That's going to have to be made up. Everyone's going to be behind when we get back to work. It's going to create some stress in the building, but we're professionals. We're going to get it done."
Perhaps the biggest explanation after the chill is over, said Williams, will have to come from El Paso Electric itself.
"It's important to remember, we're one of their customers too," he said. "This is affecting all their customers, including the city and county. NMSU has students who paid tuition and didn't go to classes this week. People who wanted to conduct business with the county couldn't do so. People heated up their homes, but the electricity went out so their fans couldn't drive their furnaces."
R. Clay Doyle, vice president of New Mexico Affairs at El Paso Electric Company, said in a letter to the Sun-News that their power generating stations simply were not designed to handle such severe cold.
"We are open to constructive criticism. However, the severity and especially the duration of this arctic storm exceeded the normal design and operating standards of local power generating facilities," he said.
In the week ahead, city leaders expected to regroup and figure out what, if anything, could have been prevented or done better, said city manager Robert Garza.
"This is not something we reasonably expect to occur," he said. "But it happened once and it could happen again."
The National Weather Service continues to forecast a gradual day-to-day upward trend in temperatures through the weekend, especially at night. Highs today will be 10 to 25 degrees warmer and above freezing for first time in four days for the majority of the region.
Sun-News reporter Steve Ramirez contributed to this article.
Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462.
The cold, hard facts
•All city buildings and facilities are scheduled to re-open for normal business hours Monday, including municipal court, Branigan Library and the Museum of Natural History. City bus and Dial-a-Ride service and trash service have also resumed.
•Las Cruces Public Schools will resume classes as normal Monday. All this weekend's school events except for one swim meet in Hobbs have been canceled. Las Cruces High School's production of "The Crucible" has been postponed and will be performed 7 p.m. Feb. 17, 18 and 19 at O-ate High School's Performing Arts Center.
•Do-a Ana County planned to re-open county offices and courts Monday, as long as the electric grid remained stable.
•Do-a Ana Community College will be closed today but events scheduled at New Mexico State University will go ahead as planned. As of 6 p.m. Friday, NMSU had not announced whether classes would resume Monday.
•The Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley pet adoption event scheduled for this morning's downtown farmer's market has been canceled; adoptions will still take place 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Pet's Barn.
