The month of June was wet, but not wet enough to pull the local area out of drought.
According to longtime local weather observer James Andrus, rainfall in Cortez and Montezuma County was plentiful in June, providing 222 percent of the historical average for that month. June is typically our driest month, but this time around, 82 one-hundredths of an inch of rain fell, all during the first six days. The historical average is 37 hundredths of an inch.
According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, this June was the 14th wettest on record for Montezuma County.
That’s the good news. On the down side, this has so far been the 38th driest of the past 131 years, and Cortez remains in moderate drought.
A moister future may not be likely. In a study published this month in Nature Geoscience, researchers say the Southwest’s multi-decade drought is likely to continue. They say climate change and air pollution are creating circulation patterns in the Pacific Ocean that result in warmer, drier weather in the Southwest.
The researchers say an important factor in droughts is the moisture level in the soil. The article says as climate warming continues, “future soil droughts in the region might become more severe, develop faster, and persist longer.”
Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.