Drought continues to spread back across Colorado after a dry summer and start to fall, with nearly all the state at least abnormally dry just three months after more than half the state was drought-free.
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Drought conditions continue to improve in the eastern half of Colorado, as one-third of the state is drought-free as of this week. But little has changed on the drought-stricken Western Slope.
A powerful snowstorm headed for Colorado isn t likely to reach epic levels predicted in some initial forecast models, but meteorologists agree the weekend storm will be significant.
Early models of the storm, expected to arrive Friday night, called for about 4 feet of snow for the Fort Collins area. That would be a record breaker.
As of Tuesday, those outlier forecasts are being dismissed with a best guess four days ahead of the storm: closer to maybe half that much, with the potential for more.
Russ Schumacher, director of the Colorado Climate Center, said this much is known: The confidence level is quite high that we will have a pretty significant storm, he said. The question this far out is how much snow we get and exactly where is too far to pin down. But at the zoomed-out view, there is going to be a storm and probably a big one for someone.
Andy Stein
The Rare Colorado Derecho
A derecho is a line of strong storms with damaging winds that holds its intensity for a very long time. You’ll typically find derechos in the Midwest and eastern U.S., which makes what hit Colorado on June 6 a rare occurrence: This was the first derecho to impact Colorado in modern records. There were 91 reports of damaging winds in a single day, smashing the old record of thirty back in May 2006. The highest wind report came from Winter Park, which measured 110 mph.
The Yuma Heat Burst
Colorado is known for its temperature swings, but the one in early July in Yuma was a record-breaker. A collapsing (or weakening) thunderstorm sent down a plume of air in what s known in meteorology as adiabatic warming. The temperature in Yuma at 2 a.m. was 68 degrees. By 4 a.m., the temperature had risen to 88 degrees. And just two hours later, the temperature was back to 64 degrees.