A rainstorm in the first two days of April produced enough moisture to push the month’s total precipitation to 179 percent of the historic average for Cortez.
However, that didn’t really change the dramatically dry picture overall in the area.
Cortez’s year-to-date precipitation total through the end of April was at 86 percent of average, according to local weather observer James Andrus.
Montezuma County is in severe drought and snowpack across the West is extremely low. Andrus noted in an email that the SNOTEL ratings for the San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan basin was at 13 percent of normal as of May 8.
Peak snowpack totals this year will be the new benchmark low for Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. “There are no comparable years,” NIDIS said in an email.
The usual peak date for snowpack is around April 1. In those four states, snow water equivalent at that peak time was 32 to 53 percent lower than the previous record low during the SNOTEL era.
“Snowpack, the western U.S.’s largest non-man made reservoir, is already gone in many places,” NIDIS noted.
Andrus says the 30-day and 90-day weather outlooks are for warmer-than-average temperatures but also above-average moisture as a powerful El Niño climate pattern moves in.
Andrus notes there has been “a crazy yo-yo precipitation pattern” so far this year, with below-normal and above-normal precipitation alternating each month.
Temperatures have also shown wild swings, with warm daily temperatures mixed in with occasional near-freezing nights.
