{"id":21815,"date":"2025-06-16T20:44:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T20:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/despite-spring-showers-in-may-cortez-remains-in-drought-status\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:09:09","slug":"despite-spring-showers-in-may-cortez-remains-in-drought-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/despite-spring-showers-in-may-cortez-remains-in-drought-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite spring showers in May, Cortez remains in drought status"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=794b042c-2ca8-5c4f-aaba-5fc03f14789c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1606\" alt=\"A quiet trail at Hawkins Preserve in Cortez. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A quiet trail at Hawkins Preserve in Cortez. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Cortez came in at 142% of its average precipitation in May, largely thanks to storms that hit the first nine days of the month.<\/p>\n<p>During those storms, 0.97 inch of rain quickly pushed Cortez past its 0.93 inch average for the whole month.<\/p>\n<p>For the remaining 22 days of May, just 0.35 inch of rain fell; by month\u2019s end, the city\u2019s total precipitation reached 1.32 inches.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back on 2025, the first time Cortez surpassed a monthly average for precipitation was in February, thanks to a generous Valentine\u2019s weekend storm. It happened again in May, and just 16 days into June, the city is more than double the average precipitation for what is historically the driest month of the year.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, drought status remains in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be nice if the rainfall was more distributed for the month,\u201d said Jim Andrus, a weather watcher in Cortez for the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n<p>Andrus added that it\u2019s a random episode or two of rain that pushes a month over its average precipitation, like the concentrated storms in February, May and now June; all the rain for this month \u2013 0.86 inch \u2013 fell in the first six days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCasino Weather could describe Cortez weather so far this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cslots lever\u201d in \u201cJanuary, March and April got few matches, but pulls for February and May got all five raindrops lined up for above-normal rainfall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Pulls this month have also been lucky, but even with 0.39 inch more rain than usual in May, and 0.49 inch more so far in June, Cortez remains nearly an inch short of its average year-to-date precipitation.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Montezuma County \u201csuffers moderate to severe drought,\u201d so \u201cbe careful betting your water reserves in this atmospheric lottery,\u201d said Andrus.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/MTO2t8f9hGYdKzrpUTtydU4ak0A.pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:500px;border:1px solid #ddd\" loading=\"lazy\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/MTO2t8f9hGYdKzrpUTtydU4ak0A.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">US Drought monitor.pdf (Download PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"naviga-pdf-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/MTO2t8f9hGYdKzrpUTtydU4ak0A.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">US Drought monitor.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Neighboring states \u2013 namely southern Arizona and New Mexico, and west and south Texas \u2013 \u201care slammed with extreme to exceptional drought, the worst two categories of drought ratings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>But here in Cortez, \u201cwe\u2019ll keep pulling that lever every month hoping for more rain payouts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>As far as temperature goes, the 30-day outlook is leaning above average, and the 90-day outlook is predicting above average temperatures.<\/p>\n<p>In May, the highest temperature was 90 degrees on May 31, and the coldest was 29 degrees on May 20.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s one sunny blue hot day after another,\u201d Andrus said. \u201cI\u2019ll keep my fingers crossed for monsoon season,\u201d which is July, August and September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June, the city is already above-average precipitation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77470,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815\/revisions\/77470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21815"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}