Dexter Fire Chief: Strong storm damages dairy near U.S. 285

A strong storm Thursday evening knocked out power and tore the roof off a milking barn at the Rockhill Dairy near Dexter in southern Chaves County.

Dexter Fire Chief Justin Powell said the storm blew through around 6:45 p.m. causing extensive damage to the dairy near United States Highway 285.

“I went into the milking place and that roof was completely gone and way down at the other end of the dairy and thrown up against the shade shelters for the cows,” he said. “They lost everything.”

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Powell didn’t offer an estimate on the damages.

“It’s going to be several hundred thousand (dollars). That milking barn had all their computers, and everything housed in there. That’s their whole livelihood.”

The force of the storm snapped an electrical pole in half west of the dairy, Powell said.

Powell said the storm knocked out windows to a house near U.S. 285.

Despite the damage, Powell said the residents had power and no one was injured.

“I’m not really sure what exactly happened, thank goodness no one was really hurt, and everything was good,” Powell said.

Powell said Dexter residents are resilient. After Thursday’s storm headed east people started cleaning up around Rock Hill Dairy.

“There was probably 45 people out there working, doing whatever to get them cows safe and figure what needed to be done,” Powell said.

Almost three months ago, a tornado caused some damage near Dexter’s town limits.

More:Aftermath of tornado in Dexter, NM

Powell said cleanup work following that storm started immediately as well.

“There was not a lot of damage done to the town itself,” he said. “There was a couple of mobile home parks there and a couple of places where they do some apartment rentals on the west side of town (that was damaged) that was all on private property. There were lots of businesses that helped them clean up.

“That clean up was super-fast. That took probably two to three days and you would’ve never known anything happened. They cleaned up so good and so fast.”

Chaves County National Weather Service Skywarn Coordinator Jim Tucker said the storm was a microburst and not a tornado.

“A microburst is a strong isolated down flow and outflow from a thunderstorm that comes down and hits the ground,” he said.

Along with the strong winds, Tucker said the storm produced nickel size hail.

Severe thunderstorms were forecast through Saturday for Chaves County, per the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.

Scattered severe thunderstorms were forecast through Friday night for Eddy County, according to the National Weather Service in Midland, Texas.

Mike Smith can be reached at 575-628-5546 or by email at MSmith@currentargus.com or @ArugsMichae on Twitter.