finnster

Hey thanks. Good to hear there was at least a little rain. Based on what Raindance is saying about what’s ahead for the West, if Denver is just at 63% YTD it seems highly likely you’ll finish the year well below average. The Fort Collins area is in about the same boat, and southern CO is in the worst shape. In this era on the CO front range an above average month of precipitation is hard to come by, let alone a year. The summer months in particular have become very hot and dry in recent years. This pattern sets in June or July (fortunately the last two June’s have been better) and doesn’t let up until mid-October or so.

We did have a feeble attempt at a thunderstorm a bit ago here in the Bellvue area. It did wet the ground a little and then high winds dried it up in about 2 seconds. I don’t know how else to put it this weather sucks

Yes very interesting to see this - no doubt the low temp due to the utter lack of moisture in the air now. Sad to see the entire state getting engulfed in drought now. Right now reminds me of the year 2012 when large chunks of Colorado forests burned (in fact as I type this I can look up the mountain and see burn scars from that year). I hope I’m wrong but am very concerned about the effects this summer heat wave will bring - if you believe what you read (I don’t always) this pattern will persist all summer. I pray the experts are wrong about this!

Not much good news with our weather pattern these days. On the Bouldercast web site they are talking about the severity of the heat wave, which seems to be centered on Colorado. Also severe drought in southern Colorado that is now creeping north. Also it appears that the Southwest US monsoon will be late or nonexistent (according to Bouldercast). Then this fall La Niña is supposed to get established which tends to be dry in southern and eastern Colorado. Oh boy - things turn quickly don’t they ?

Thanks Chinook, appreciate the weather stats. My location (near Lory State Park NW of Fort Collins) also had pretty good rainfall for June. As for this last snow season we had an abundance here in the northern foothills - in the 110”+ range. Despite my hopes to the contrary (one can always hope), I’m getting the distinct feeling the summer will now heat up and dry out. This has been the pattern for most of the last 20 years (2004 and 2009 stand out as exceptions). At least June was reasonable though.... Coincidentally, this was also about the timeframe the Atlantic (AMO) shifted to its warm phase, where it’s mostly been since. If that AMO would switch to a cool phase that might help cool the summers around here (and elsewhere). That’s one theory at least..... Another thing that has been noticeable the last several years is the lack of any robust monsoon pattern the second part of the summer (I’m talking about the front range). I honestly don’t know why this is the case, I’ve just noticed it.

After a pretty decent May, at least here in the foothills NW of Fort Collins, thunderstorms typical of early June have been noticeably absent. If we don’t get some rain soon, our next hope will be for the monsoon pattern to kick in mid-July. At least that’s the typical pattern, however it seems it has been a while since we’ve had a robust monsoon pattern in this area in July/August. Here’s hoping we don’t see the hot/dry summer pattern that has dominated many recent years. Maybe this is the year we get a decent monsoon showing .

Good to hear - whatever the exact measurement is it sounds like you got a good rain. Here in northern Colorado we can't buy a good rain now. At my location northwest of Fort Collins we're currently at 70 days without any significant precip. We seem to be too far north, too far south, too far east, or too far west to catch any storm that comes along. We've run out of directions to miss storms from