finnster

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….

I don’t keep track of this, but I wonder when is the last date there’s actually been a below normal temp this summer on the northern front range? One thing I’ve noticed about this and recent summers here: anytime we are fortunate enough to get a shower, it must then be immediately followed by yet another hot/dry spell that negates any benefits from said shower.

Good to hear many areas got some precip yesterday. The Laporte/Bellvue area once again missed out on the rain. Some parts of FC did get some rain - thankfully. I got to tell you, if you enjoy summer showers and thunderstorms the Laporte/Bellvue area is NOT where you want to live! It can rain all around us but not here. We moved to Bellvue 3.5 years ago and I’ve seen this happen each summer. There are pretty views here but summer rain is very hard to come by.

I agree - just wow. For Fort Collins I did not look at temperature records but wouldn’t be surprised to see our recent Augusts in the record books. June and July as well. It is almost like clockwork the past several years, the spring months are pretty wet and stormy and then when June rolls around its like a switch is flipped to hot and dry and pretty much stays that way the rest of summer until fall storms start materializing (if we’re lucky that is). Definitely following that same script again. I was glad to see some parts of Colorado have some monsoon activity this year - we didn’t see any of it in the FoCo area.

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.

Thanks, I know many parts of the west and Midwest are in pretty bad shape, so I’m definitely grateful for the rain (and snow earlier) we’ve gotten. Would just be nice to see some wet thunderstorms once in awhile to keep temperatures down and the fire danger in check.

The abundant spring moisture and cooler temps on the northern front range have sure been a blessing. As we passed into June it seems a switch just got flipped, and now I'm starting to feel uneasy (again) . Now we're in to a pattern of hot and dry weather - if that is the case until October (like most of recent summers) I'm going to be seriously bummed. Someone please tell me we're going to have some semblance of a monsoon pattern this summer at some point!

While I still have them on my phone I wanted to share some pics from the mega-storm. These are from our house 4 miles southwest of Bellvue CO. We got about 3 ft. at our place and much more (45"+) just to the west of us. Yesterday I hiked up the mountain behind us and there is still 18-24" in the trees/north facing hills. Yep, quite a storm.

This is a little late but I got a request for some pics from our house southwest of Bellvue. We measured 40" on our back patio (the middle pic), I've seen some Colorado Climate Center reports for the Bellvue area that ranged from 33-36" - so probably fair to say we're in that range. In any event its a LOT of snow and we have not been able to get out of our place yet, except on snow shoes.

Yea it’s an amazing amount of snow. Open our patio door and there’s a 5 ft. bank of snow staring at you. In Nov. 2019 we got 30” of snow from a storm right before Thanksgiving - that storm took a similar track as this one, but this one apparently stalled in a very favorable location.

Here at our place SW of Bellvue in the foothills, we measured 41” earlier this afternoon, and add another 4-6 “ since then. We tend to really catch the snow from northern front range storms. This storm was epic!

Checking out

I check in once in a while at opensnow.com. The site is mountain snow/skiing oriented but is a good place to track storms heading into Colorado. Or in this case, the lack thereof. Unfortunately they are seeing little if any snow for CO (and the West in general) until late December. Seems as though a huge high pressure ridge is setting up shop again over the west (does it ever really go away?). What causes these ridges to keep building and hovering over the west?

Our place did well in this storm - measured just shy of 16” (we’re above Lory State Park). I’m so glad to see it, as our area was threatened by part of the Cameron Peak Fire. We’re told the fires won’t be put out by this storm but it darn sure helped a lot.

Ok I overestimated - just measured we have 11” not 12. I tend to overestimate the size of fish I catch too

Here too southwest of Bellvue. We have about 12” already - no kidding....

Greetings all. Just spent a week being evacuated and got back into our house yesterday (Lory State Park area). The extent of the fires and drought conditions is unreal. I don’t know what it will take to break down the pattern of nearly constant high pressure ridges in the western US, but that pattern is certainly the main culprit for the extreme conditions. Once in a great while the pattern will relax and a storm will get through - only to be followed by a ridge re-establishing. Rinse and repeat. Of course fires are nature’s way of regenerating healthy forests. This regeneration can only happen IF there is a period of cooler temps/storminess to enable it - and as we’ve seen over the past couple decades this cannot be taken for granted. With each passing year life in the western US gets more interesting and challenging. I'm Thankful and in awe of the job the fire fighters are doing in exceptionally bad conditions. They (and all of us!) desperately need a break from this relentlessly wicked weather pattern .

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