finnster

About 8" here in foothills NW of Fort Collins with good moisture content. A blessing indeed!

You'd think just from dumb luck we'd stumble into a storm one of these days....

We received 0'" at our location (Bellvue NW of Fort Collins). Thought we'd at least get something MEASURABLE but nada. So still no precip. in Nov. and 40+ days since any was recorded. Brutal...

tacoman - thanks very much for your post, and good information you shared. I probably went off the deep end a bit due to my frustration over the anemic pattern we've been in. I hope you're right that it changes soon!

Bummer - in Fort Collins area looks like we will get nothing out of this 'storm' . Still waiting for first flakes (or just something besides wind - get plenty of that). The record for latest first snow here is Dec. 13. The way things are going will probably break that. Might as well - we've broken just about every other record for heat/dryness in the last decade.

Below is the NOAA outlook I referenced above. I about threw up when I saw this. But then, does anyone else think this might be slightly 'overdone'? Just sayin'

Yes the extent of drought in the lower 48 is downright scary now. We on the northern front range have had a nice little respite from drought the past 2.5 months. However, with this last storm being a dud (lot of wind with little precip = worst combination), followed up by rapid warm up this weekend I fear our respite from dry weather is about to end. If NOAA’s most recent outlooks for spring and summer are to be believed, a big chunk of the US is in for warm and dry weather. I’m not sure I believe that (NOAA seems to have a warm /dry bias in most of their seasonal outlooks), but if their outlook were to verify it’s not going to be pretty….

Good to see Raindance posting again!

I was looking at historical records for snowfall in Fort Collins. Here are the top 5 lowest snowfall seasons: 1. 1945-46 - 8.5” 2. 1903-04 - 10.5” 3. 1934-35 - 11.7” 4. 1933-34 - 15.4” 5. 1924-25 - 21.2” As you can see there have been some really low snowfall seasons. There have also been numerous seasons in the 20-30” range. The way things are trending currently I could see this snowfall season breaking into the top 5 group above. I hope I’m wrong! I also looked for years that 0 or near 0 snowfall during October-November-December. There were no such years in the Fort Collins records but a few came close: 1934 - .5” 1914 - .7” 1904 - 1.0” Fort Collins now sits at .7” snow so far, so if nothing more happens this month we will be in the top 3 years for lowest snowfall October-December. Denver of course has NO snowfall so far this season, and is smashing their latest first snow record - the way it’s looking they could break it by a month or more which is both incredible and scary. What in the world happened to the weather pattern in the last 6 months?!?!

As if we haven’t seen enough records broken for heat/drought in recent years on the front range here’s more: -Denver’s latest first measurable snowfall on record is Nov. 21, and that could broken this year. Boulder also has not yet received its first measurable snow and latest date on record is Nov. 19. Fort Collins did receive its first measurable snow in October but only by a whimper - .4” -I saw this past Sunday Denver reached a high of 80 degrees, the second highest temp ever recorded in November (it reached 81 in November 2017). It looks like temperatures are really going to warm up early next week (into the 70s), so who knows we may not be done with 80 degree temp yet…. Was hoping to start seeing signs of climbing out of this drought but it is getting worse not better

Thanks Chinook for posting that graph. It is kinda over my head as to how to interpret it. However, when I see words like high pressure ridge all over the west it does not sound like good news for our region - at least for those of us who are ready to see some storms roll in. I guess just enjoy the return of late summer weather for the next several days. Maybe in December we'll see a more positive change in the weather pattern?

FYI - I posted the message below at the end of August for the Fort Collins area. For this area, the precipitation situation for September and October did not improve any. After a solid wet spring this year, the northern front range weather pattern just flipped to hot and very dry. Here we are now in November and no sign of any change in the pattern. When we have consecutive years of drought in the state the water situation can get ugly. Let’s hope for a positive change… The months of June, July and August have truly been on a hot and drying trend for several years in the Fort Collins area, specifically (this likely extends to much broader area but I'm talking about the FC area where I live). I recently dug into historical weather records for FC - my source is the Western Regional Climate Center (wrcc.dri.edu). What I found was pretty eye-opening. The long-term mean for total precip. for June-July-Aug for FC is 4.75". The last year FC had greater than average precip for these months was 2009 - over a decade ago. In fact going back over 110 years of records, all decades up to the 2010's featured at least one year (and generally multiple years) that exceeded the average precip. for June-July-Aug. This includes the droughty 1930's and 1950's. In case you're interested the wettest year I found for these months was 1997 at 14.79" and the driest was 1924 at .48". I did not delve into the temperature records but its not going out on a limb to say its been damn hot overall (I would say starting 2000). Barring a miracle in the next few days, this year in FC the precip for June-July-Aug will also be well below average at 1.77". This is actually LESS than last year, the big fire year. Again this is for FC - your mileage may vary at your location. What does the future hold? Who knows, but the current trend for summer precip and temps is not encouraging.

Yes we’re west of the north end of Horsetooth, right next to Lory State Park.

Yea we were evacuated for a week a year ago as well. I feel like our immediate area is as dry as last summer but fortunately no fires (most everything around has burned already ). it’s interesting that as the crow flies we’re not far from Glen Haven but have missed the summer precipitation you were fortunate to get….

Our area (Bellvue vicinity) also had 10 minutes or so of rain the other night, but it was over all too soon. That has been the case going back to late May - I don’t think we’ve had a single precipitation event since then that has been over a quarter-inch or so. We missed the monsoon showers that were good to the south, and now storms are tracking to the north (Wyo & SD just got dumped on). We seem to be in no-mans land in between. Now a bonafide La Niña pattern seems to be getting established - those typically do not bode well for the front range as far as beneficial moisture. We mainly get wind. The northern mountains can do well with snow though. We’ll just have to see. My wife have been traveling around quite a bit the past few months in CO, WY, and SD. I don’t need to tell anyone this, but it is so dry out there - reservoirs are WAY down and streams in many cases are all but dried up. It will take a sustained, very wet period to restore fresh water supplies, that’s for sure. And to start healing all the forest fire damage from the past two decades….