Drought still has the Four Corners in its fiery grip, but forecasters are hopeful that a good monsoon season may be coming.
June is typically the driest month, and this June was even drier than normal.
Longtime local weather observer James Andrus reports that Cortez received just 12 one-hundredths of an inch of rain, about a third of the already stingy June average.
Year-to-date precipitation totals 3.3 inches, two-thirds of average, according to Andrus.
Cortez has worsened from severe drought to extreme drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor.
In a July 8 webinar, researcher Dan McEvoy of the Desert Research Institute and Western Regional Climate Center said about 72 percent of the West is experiencing drought and it increased in severity in recent year.
For the period starting in October 2025 through June 2026, most of the Southwest saw its warmest water year since 1895 McEvoy said. (A water year is measured from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.)
McEvoy said the evaporative demand drought index, which represents the “thirst of the atmosphere,” is showing greatly above-average anomalies over the Four Corners.
Meteorologist Brad Pugh of the National Weather Service said there’s a probability of above-normal temperatures in the Intermountain West the week of July 15 through 21. But he said such heat spells often precede the onset of the monsoon season and there’s a good probability of above-normal precipitation over the desert Southwest and northward.
“El Niño is here and will likely impact the North American monsoon,” said Professor Michael Crimmins of the University of Arizona.
Numerous forecasts say the El Niño ocean current could bring more moisture to the Southwest.
An agricultural meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Brad Rippey, said half of the territory in the lower 48 states is currently in drought.
That is having a huge impact on agriculture, he said.
“We started this year with the lowest beef-cow or cattle inventory in 75 years going all the way back to the early 1950s,” Rippey said.
That will have a long-term impact, he said.
“You cannot replace a cattle herd immediately. It takes years to rebuild inventory.”
Likewise, rangeland and pastures don’t recover immediately if it starts to rain. “It can take years to recover fully,” Rippey said.
Numerous crops have also been affected. Rippey said this year, about a third of the U.S. winter wheat crop is expected to be abandoned, meaning that of every three acres planted, just two will be harvested.
Except for 2023, he said, “you have to go all the way back to the Dust Bowl era, 1933, to find a year with higher winter wheat abandonment.”
Colorado is “kind of ground zero” for the winter-wheat problems, he said.
Despite the predictions of an above-average monsoon season locally, Andrus is uncertain.
In an email, he said, “Given the persistence of drought we are experiencing, even if future precipitation forecasts are more optimistic, this skeptical meteorologist still lives by this statement: I'll believe it when I measure it.”
