{"id":24077,"date":"2025-01-09T21:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T04:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/precipitation-in-december-deemed-horrendous-in-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:48:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:48:03","slug":"precipitation-in-december-deemed-horrendous-in-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/precipitation-in-december-deemed-horrendous-in-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Precipitation in December deemed \u2018horrendous\u2019 in Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ute
Ute Mountain at sunset. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In December, Cortez received a mere 0.06 inches of precipitation, a total that local weather expert Jim Andrus called \u201chorrendous.\u201d<\/p>\n

That number is just 7% of the 0.89 inches of precipitation December normally gets.<\/p>\n

But even with the meager snowfall, 2024\u2019s total precipitation of 12.79 inches is above the usual 11.79 inches the area gets annually.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say December\u2019s total wasn\u2019t \u201chorrendous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the driest I\u2019ve recorded in my 27 years of recordkeeping for Cortez,\u201d said Andrus. \u201cIt\u2019s a horrendous precipitation situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his 27 years, Andrus said he\u2019s recorded as much as 74.8 inches and as little as 8 inches during a winter season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis dry La Ni\u00f1a winter now threatens to set a new minimum record if we don\u2019t recover from this situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The La Ni\u00f1a pattern, Andrus explained, means a warmer and drier season than usual in the Southwest, and a wetter winter in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is exactly what it\u2019s supposed to look like,\u201d he said. \u201cI sure wish we could\u2019ve had an exception here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those warmer temperatures set two new records in December.<\/p>\n

Andrus recorded 58 degrees on Dec. 22, which broke the 1955 record of 54 degrees. On Dec. 30, temperatures reached 61 degrees, which broke the 2017 record of 60 degrees.<\/p>\n

No daily lows were set.<\/p>\n

The lowest recorded temperature for the month was 12 degrees on Dec. 11, and the coldest daily high was 38 degrees on Dec. 10, 11 and 27.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least during this drought, it hasn\u2019t been windy,\u201d Andrus said.<\/p>\n

Plus, the vegetation around Cortez isn\u2019t as dense as in some of the California suburbs, so the weather pattern is less of a threat here firewise, he said.<\/p>\n

Still, there was a fire on Christmas Eve that burned an estimated quarter of an acre in McElmo Canyon, said Cortez Fire Battalion Chief Rick Spencer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was accidentally caused and was fueled by the very dry conditions. Even though it is \u2018winter\u2019 the vegetation is very dry and will burn,\u201d Spencer said in an email.<\/p>\n

In light of this weather, Andrus advised folks to \u201cconserve water, don\u2019t waste it. I\u2019m not sure how much runoff we\u2019ll get this spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re a bit below normal for snowpack, he said.<\/p>\n

A newsletter recently sent out by the San Juan Mountain Association echoed the point, at least for that range.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe San Juan snowpack is off to a rocky start, but there\u2019s still hope for a snowy comeback. It\u2019s currently at 83-84% of median for this time of year, which is well behind our northern neighbors,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The hope lies in January and February, which \u201care typically our snowiest months,\u201d according to the newsletter.<\/p>\n

So far in January, Andrus said Cortez has received 0.3 inches of snow.<\/p>\n

The warmer, drier La Ni\u00f1a pattern is expected to stick around, looking ahead at the 30- and 90-day forecasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe La Ni\u00f1a pattern can be stable and stubborn about moving,\u201d said Andrus. \u201cThe only people that seem to be getting enough snow is the ski resorts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

31 days, the city\u2019s total precipitation came in at a fraction of an inch <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24077","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=24077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78389,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24077\/revisions\/78389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24077"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}