Back-to-back powerful Pacific storm systems to impact the Pacific Northwest and northern California through the end of this week with heavy rain, flooding, strong winds, and higher elevation mountain snow. A strong, long-duration atmospheric river will accompany the Pacific storms, bringing excessive rainfall and flash flooding to southwest Oregon and northwest California through the week. Read More >
July 2019 Climate Summary for Eastern Utah and Western Colorado
July 2019 saw the return of the North American Monsoon to the Four Corners with several bouts of subtropical moisture advecting into the region from the south beginning around mid July. While storms originally began to favor the higher terrain at the onset of the monsoonal bursts, activity eventually drifted into the valleys and became more widespread as the atmosphere juiced up. Several of these monsoon storms produced heavy rain with some storms exceeding 1 to 2 inches. This led to localized flooding as well as some mudslides. The most notable mudslide occurred on July 26th on I-70 west of Glenwood Springs, which resulted in eastbound traffic being closed on the interstate for an extended period of time. Finally, these monsoonal storms through the latter portion of the month produced gusty outflow winds with some tree damage being reported in the Montrose area after a storm passed through on July 13th.
The important thing to remember with the monsoon season is it all depends on where the storms end up. So while we saw some heavy rain producers in July, overall the month ended up being drier than normal based on the 10 automated stations found at airports across eastern Utah and western Colorado, with 9 of those stations ending July with below normal precipitation. The most precipitation fell at the Montrose Regional Airport where 1.08 inches fell...0.08 inches above normal for July. July was warmer than normal for most of the region with mean temperatures ranging anywhere from 1 to 4 degrees above normal. The warmest July temperature of 104 degrees occurred at the Canyonlands Field Airport in Moab, Utah on the 22nd. The coldest temperature of 39 degrees F occurred at the Durango-La Plata County Airport on July 5th, 9th, and 10th.
Grand Junction had an average monthly temperature of 80.0 degrees which was 1.8 degrees above normal. The highest temperature was 102 degrees on July 22nd and the lowest was 52 degrees on the 9th. 0.12 inches of precipitation fell throughout the month which was 0.49 inches below normal. 0.0 inches of snow fell which was normal.
Taking a quick look ahead to August, the official forecast from the Climate Prediction Center (https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/lead14/) shows odds of cooler than normal temperatures across northwest Colorado with above normal precipitation favored for the entirety of eastern Utah and western Colorado.
For more climate information from other sites, please visit our climate page on our website at http://w2.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=gjt (select the NOWDATA tab for even more sites). You can also follow us on Facebook (@NWSGrandJunction) or Twitter (@NWSGJT).
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