{"id":22649,"date":"2025-04-17T21:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T21:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/weekend-showers-to-give-way-to-tranquil-weather-in-montezuma-county\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:15:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:15:29","slug":"weekend-showers-to-give-way-to-tranquil-weather-in-montezuma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/weekend-showers-to-give-way-to-tranquil-weather-in-montezuma-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend showers to give way to tranquil weather in Montezuma County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Rain
Rain and snow are in Durango\u2019s weekend forecast. (Christian Burney\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Cortez is in for a cool, wet weekend according to the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, which forecasts rain and snow through Saturday and freezing overnight lows through Sunday.<\/p>\n

Meteorologist Kris Sanders said a cold front, driven by a low-pressure system moving in from the north, will meander over the Four Corners and linger through the weekend.<\/p>\n

Although rain and snow showers were forecast to begin as early as Thursday night, high temperatures in Cortez on Friday and Saturday are expected to reach 45 degrees. Snow accumulation is unlikely \u2013 though up to 1 inch is possible in Cortez and Durano, he said.<\/p>\n

He added that overnight and morning temperatures could dip into the upper teens by Sunday, before climbing back to around freezing by Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

The best chance for snow accumulation is Friday night.<\/p>\n

The forecast for the San Juan Mountains through Saturday afternoon is more dramatic, with the potential for about a foot of snow at higher elevations, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you do head up (U.S. Highway 550), you\u2019re looking at the potential for some of those areas to get upward of a foot, maybe above a foot,\u201d he said. \u201cTravel will be interesting due to the snow impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the weather service issued a red flag warning and wind advisory for the Cortez and Durango areas through 8 p.m., citing gusty winds, low relative humidity and dry fire fuels. The agency warned that fires could ignite and spread quickly.<\/p>\n

Winds of 15 to 25 mph from the southwest were expected, with gusts up to 50 mph, though the strong gusts were not predicted to persist into the weekend.<\/p>\n

According to available weather data from a NWS station atop College Mesa dating back to 1915, the record snowfall for April 19 (Saturday) is 5 inches, set in 1933. The record for April 20 is 4\u00bd inches, set in 1995.<\/p>\n

Sanders said measurable snow has been recorded only three times on April 19 and five times on April 20, according to the data.<\/p>\n

Temperatures are expected to rise quickly, reaching 61 degrees by Sunday and climbing to around 70 degrees by Wednesday, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe rebound fairly quickly given we\u2019re in April, and we\u2019re just in a pattern where there\u2019s not really a significant system on the horizon,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at tranquil weather, a gradual warm-up for spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rain, snow expected in Cortez; San Juan Mountains could receive accumulation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[950,28,475,1623,1164,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-colorado","tag-rain","tag-snow","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22649","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=22649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77798,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22649\/revisions\/77798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22649"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}