The western corners of the state were abnormally dry during the summer of 2019, but the rest experienced no drought. Now, every part of the state except a sliver of Weld County is parched, The Colorado Sun reported Monday.<\/p>\n
Drought monitor author Richard Heim said it will take several years of heavy rain for the state to return to 2019 figures.<\/p>\n
Conditions have deteriorated over the past year due to drier conditions, warmer temperatures and a higher level of evaporation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dryness and drought has been building over many, many months,\u201d Heim said.<\/p>\n
When the air evaporates water at a higher rate, there is a lower humidity and less water in the soil, rivers and reservoirs.<\/p>\n
An unusually dry winter and spring is also to blame.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s snow fields play a crucial role in maintaining moisture, serving as a reservoir once winter passes and the snow starts to melt. When that happens, the excess water feeds rivers and nourishes soil. A particularly dry spring meant the snow melted too quickly to feed water systems downstream.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Drought Monitor is a collaboration between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
western corners of the state were abnormally dry during the summer of 2019, but the rest experienced no drought. Now, every part of the state except a sliver of Weld County is parched, The Colorado Sun reported Monday. Drought monitor author Richard Heim said it will take several years of heavy rain for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,402],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-drought"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52343","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=52343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52343"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}