{"id":25765,"date":"2024-09-09T18:30:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T00:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/august-was-a-generous-monsoon-month-in-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:27:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:27:19","slug":"august-was-a-generous-monsoon-month-in-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/august-was-a-generous-monsoon-month-in-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"August was a generous monsoon month in Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Dolores River Canyon. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In the midst of monsoon season, August proved generous, gifting over double its normal precipitation for the month.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve heard of classic cars and classic sodas. After an uncertain start this summer, the second week of August has brought us Monsoon Classic,\u201d James Andrus of Cortez, a weather observer for the National Weather Service, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

In just two weeks\u2019 time, the area received 1.64 inches of rain, which surpassed the 1.34-inch average for the entire month.<\/p>\n

By the end of August, Cortez received 2.73 inches of rain.<\/p>\n

Andrus called it a successful month in the monsoon season, which is made up of July, August and September.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it can be well above normal, or sometimes a monsoon fails us, and we wind up well below normal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This August, it was well above normal: 204% above, to be exact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a really good month,\u201d said Andrus. \u201cWe don\u2019t have many 200% months.\u201d<\/p>\n

That puts our year-to-date precipitation at 9.21 inches \u2013 that\u2019s 123% of the normal 7.49 inches Cortez typically accumulates by now.<\/p>\n

As far as temperatures go, Cortez had four record-breaking hot days last month.<\/p>\n

Aug. 2: 98 degrees broke the 1954 record for the day, 97 degrees.<\/div>\n
Aug. 3: 99 degrees broke the 2008 record, 97 degrees.<\/div>\n
Aug. 6: 99 degrees broke the 2009 record, 96 degrees.<\/div>\n
Aug. 7: 99 degrees broke the 1969 record, 97 degrees.<\/div>\n

Aug. 26 saw the coolest daily high temperature of 77 degrees; Aug. 6 had the warmest daily low of 65 degrees. The coldest daily low was 49 degrees on Aug. 30.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, temperatures will likely be above September averages. The 30-day forecast says Cortez is leaning below normal amounts. Such patterns persist in the 90-day forecast.<\/p>\n

Previous patterns vary considerably, so it\u2019s hard to know exactly what to expect for September \u2013 drought or plentiful rain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if this is an omen for September, I\u2019m parked on East Third Street now, and I see a flock of crows circling one spot. \u2026 I\u2019m wondering if that\u2019s an omen for our future,\u201d Andrus laughed. \u201cMaybe they know something we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

month, we had 2.73 inches of rain compared with an August average of 1.34 inches <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25765","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=25765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79087,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25765\/revisions\/79087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25765"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}