All hail breaks loose in Prewitt
I-40 underpass, residents' main access, blocked

Michael Spencer wanders on top of a pile of nickel-size hail that blocked a roadway near Prewitt, Monday. Floodwaters deposited the hail Sunday evening during a thunderstorm. Spencer and the other children said they were afraid during the storm. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

PREWITT — Transportation Department workers were still busy digging marble-size hail out of a drainage tunnel and popular local underpass beneath Interstate Highway 40 Monday afternoon following an evening of flash floods that accompanied a Sunday rain storm.

Department spokeswoman Delane Baros said the flooding, runoff from heavy rains to the north, caused no notable damage, although it did force the closure of nearby New Mexico Highway 122. Although the department soon reopened the highway, Cibola County Sheriff’s officers were still keeping traffic off a frontage road near Bluewater Village, some 10 miles east, that runs along the interstate’s south side.

Transportation Department supervisor Raymond King said he and his crew of four would finish clearing the hail out of the culvert, a mile west of Exit 63, by the end of the day if the weather stayed clear. The flash floods had piled the ice pellets at least 8 feet high, making the tunnel impassible. Although vehicles are not supposed to use the tunnel, just wide enough for a truck to make it through, King said, “people who live out here use it as a driveway.”

Although Sunday night’s flash floods moved on to Bluewater, where they’ve left standing ponds in some fields, the rains returned to the area Monday evening, assuring more work for King and his crew for at least another day.

“When the hail came down, it came down hard,” said local resident Cecil Lewis of Sunday night’s storm. “That was a big flood.”

According to Lewis, who served as Baca-Prewitt chapter’s president from 1996 to 2005, the clogging of the culvert has been a constant problem for the community. A heavy rain that hit the area in the early 1990s and took out a dam just south of the community, he said, spurred talk of building a bridge over the interstate between Baca-Prewitt and Thoreau for a while, but nothing ever came of it.

Despite the overpass just a mile to the east, Lewis figures the culvert will remain a popular way of getting from one side of the interstate to the other, just so long as the hail doesn’t get in the way.