National Weather Service in Grand Junction<\/a>, Cortez\u2019s temperatures in March tracked at normal, April was 1.6 degrees above normal, and, so far, May is 1.9 degrees below normal.<\/p>\n\u201cThe spring may feel cooler than normal because of May,\u201d said weather service meteorologist Erin Walter. \u201cBut for Cortez, March was right on normal, and April was a bit warmer than normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
This spring also might seem cooler than normal because last spring was much warmer than normal, Walter said.<\/p>\n
Last year in Cortez, average March temperatures were 0.2 degree warmer than normal, average April temperatures were 3.1 degrees above normal, and May\u2019s temperatures were 3.5 degrees above normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast May, Cortez had well-above-average temperatures, and this May it\u2019s well-below, so in comparison it seems really cold, but the temperatures this spring aren\u2019t really too unusual,\u201d Walter said.<\/p>\n
Andrus said May temperatures can vary more widely from year to year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay is really a battleground month between summer and winter. Summer wants to take over, but winter is going to put up a battle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While this May has been cooler than average, Walter said one month or even one year of below-average temperatures doesn\u2019t mean a whole lot in the context of climate change.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change isn\u2019t a linear pattern. It\u2019s complex. There is still a possibility you are going to get one month or even one year that is cooler or wetter than normal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Andrus said changes to the 30-year average winter precipitation in town indicate Cortez is receiving about 0.63 inch less winter precipitation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt suggests our winters are slowly getting drier,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While winter\u2019s may be drying out in Cortez, Andrus said he welcomes this season\u2019s unusually heavy snowpack and wet May.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe certainly can appreciate what it does for our local reservoirs, and we can even start refilling Lake Powell and Lake Mead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
parmijo@ the-journal.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"seasonal temps aren\u2019t too unusual<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-93841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93841","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=93841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93841"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=93841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}