{"id":22342,"date":"2025-05-09T17:58:27","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T17:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/early-storms-push-cortez-past-average-precipitation-for-may\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:12:50","slug":"early-storms-push-cortez-past-average-precipitation-for-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/early-storms-push-cortez-past-average-precipitation-for-may\/","title":{"rendered":"Early storms push Cortez past average precipitation for May"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The waterfall at Hawkins Preserve in Cortez, roaring on Thursday. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Storms in early May totaling 0.97 inch of rain pushed Cortez over its average precipitation for the month.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot too bad for the first nine days of the month,\u201d said Jim Andrus, a weather watcher in Cortez for the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

Thirty year averages expect 0.93 inches for the month; we\u2019re 0.04 inches over that a little more than a week in.<\/p>\n

The most rain fell on May 6 \u2013 what Andrus called \u201cthe busiest part of the storm\u201d \u2013 and totaled 0.69 inches.<\/p>\n

He said there was \u201cfive days in a row measuring something\u201d during that storm.<\/p>\n

By the end of May, the year-to-date average precipitation is typically at 4.53 inches. As of May 9, the city\u2019s at 3.2 inches of precipitation for the year, so there\u2019s still room for more rain.<\/p>\n

Andrus said a weather system out of the Pacific Northwest might make its way to Cortez around Wednesday, May 14, and joked that \u201cif wind was rain, we\u2019d be well above average by now.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be sure, we\u2019re still far from being out of drought \u2013 when asked if we\u2019re close to escaping that status, Andrus said, \u201cHeaven\u2019s no.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201cweather casino,\u201d he said, \u201cpulling the slot machine, we hit the jackpot once\u201d with the storms in early May.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s hope the rain slot machine can deliver more jackpots by the end of the month,\u201d he said. \u201cThe past few days, we sure hit the jackpot \u2013 it went, Ding! Ding! Ding!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"As
As of a U>S. Drought Monitor map released May 8, most of Montezuma County remained in moderate drought. (U.S. Drought Monitor)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

is still behind its year-to-date precipitation averages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342","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=22342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77670,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions\/77670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}