{"id":39266,"date":"2022-07-26T01:15:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-26T07:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/forecast-calls-for-rain-in-cortez-and-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:48:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:48:54","slug":"forecast-calls-for-rain-in-cortez-and-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/forecast-calls-for-rain-in-cortez-and-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Forecast calls for rain in Cortez and Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Monsoonal
Monsoonal moisture is favoring the high mountains, as seen here from the summit of Centennial Peak Saturday in the La Plata Mountains. (Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal)<\/span>Jim Mimiaga<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Rain is expected to arrive this week in Southwest Colorado and drop high temperatures into the mid-80s, according to the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a 40% chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms Tuesday in Cortez, and a 70% chance Wednesday through Friday, said Erin Walter, a weather service meteorologist.<\/p>\n

The pattern is not the typical setup to draw up monsoonal rain from the south, but it is enough to \u201cpump in some high-moisture content\u201d for Southwest Colorado, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach afternoon, there is a good chance for showers, and in the higher terrain, it will be more widespread,\u201d Walter said.<\/p>\n

In Durango, there\u2019s an 80% chance for rain Tuesday through Thursday, with showers likely Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

The forecasts suggest a cooling trend this week because of the storms\u2019 accompanying cloud cover.<\/p>\n

A high-pressure ridge has created dry conditions north of Interstate 70 and helped to draw moisture to southern Colorado, the weather service said.<\/p>\n

The strongest thunderstorms are predicted along the Uncompahgre Ridge and Dallas Divide in the San Juan Mountains, which could be the focus of localized flash flooding.<\/p>\n

A high-pressure ridge is expected to push farther into the region this weekend and cut off the monsoon flow, Walter added, but there will be enough remnant moisture to spark a few mountain showers Sunday and Monday.<\/p>\n

Monsoonal rainstorms have been sporadic for Cortez, hitting some areas of town and missing others, said Jim Andrus, National Weather Service observer.<\/p>\n

Cortez is in a precipitation deficit and has had sweltering high temperatures.<\/p>\n

July has seen just 0.22 inches of rain, or 18% of the 1.25-inch average for the month.<\/p>\n

For the year, Cortez has seen 3.06 inches of rain, or about 50% of the normal 6.15 inches through July.<\/p>\n

Cortez recently broke two daily heat records, Andrus said.<\/p>\n

On July 23, the high was 102 degrees in town, beating the previous record of 100 degrees for that date in 1931.<\/p>\n

On July 24, the high in Cortez was 99 degrees, breaking the previous record of 98 degrees for that date in 2018.<\/p>\n

Western Montezuma County and western Dolores County are both rated in the category of D3 Extreme Drought, the fourth-highest drought category out of five on the U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Southern La Plata County is rated as a D2 Severe Drought, the third-highest of five categories. Northern La Plata County is at D1 Moderate Drought, or the second-highest of five categories.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

monsoonal pattern won\u2019t be enough to break the drought<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29,445,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-newsletter-lead","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39266","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=39266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84276,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39266\/revisions\/84276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39266"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}