Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Pages-past
On this date ...
1976: Clovis had recorded 4.35 inches of rain in 24 hours.
Parts of north Clovis reported up to 5 inches between 8 a.m. Aug. 2 and 8 a.m. Aug. 3.
A woman and her three small children had to be rescued from a car submerged near 21st and Main streets.
The underpass at First and Prince Streets was closed due to flooding. One official said water “was up to the ceiling of the underpass,” the Clovis News-Journal reported.
“It blows my feeble brain,” said National Weather Service observer Alvin Woodburn, who said .75 of an inch of rain fell in a 10-minute period during the deluge.
The one-day rain total was the most Clovis had recorded in a single day since 1957, CNJ reported.
1966: A fire at the Hilton Hotel in Plainview, Texas, killed one and forced 30 hotel guests into the street.
The victim was 50-year-old Jake Thompson, a custom harvester from Sweetwater, Texas. Police saw flames “pouring out of the windows of the victim’s room,” United Press International reported.
Guests in their pajamas stayed in the street from 2:40 a.m. until almost 5 a.m. before officials declared it was safe to return to the hotel.
Officials said they believe the fire was caused by a cigarette.
1956: An “atmospheric rarity — a rainbow forming a perfect circle around the sun — was visible for several minutes” around eastern New Mexico, the Clovis News-Journal reported.
A meteorologist at Clovis Air Force Base said:
“The rainbow was being formed in a cirrus cloud with a high moisture content at an altitude of about 35,000 feet, where the moisture had been turned into crystals. This condition, coupled with the fact that the sun happened to be in position directly overhead, made for the strange show.”
Pages Past is compiled by Editor David Stevens. For more regional history, check out his weblog at:
