Click on the thumbnail graphic for the hydrograph for the Yampa River at Steamboat since March 1.

From Steamboat Today (Tom Ross):

Just back in his office from the Flat Tops Wilderness Area after four days of research in the field, [Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife fisheries biologist Billy Atkinson] said a high priority is consulting with reservoir managers on the upper Yampa River to gather information about their plans to release water in the near term.

“As I’ve always said, and even with all this rain we’ve had lately, I want to see a week straight of improved dissolved oxygen levels and a good weather forecast” before contemplating a lifting of the ban, Atkinson said.

The voluntary fishing ban was imposed by Parks and Wildlife in conjunction with a city ban on tubing when the river dropped below 85 cubic feet per second. It is in effect from the Chuck Lewis State Wildlife Area upstream from Steamboat and downstream all the way to the city’s western limits.

From Steamboat Today (Tom Ross):

“We haven’t had nearly as much rain as (Steamboat has). The most we’ve gotten at one time is a quarter inch,” [North Routt Rancher Doug Carlson] said. “The past 10 days, we’ve had just enough to stop us from doing any haying but really not enough to do us a whole lot of good.”

Routt County CSU Extension Agent Todd Hagenbuch said the weather forecast that calls for mostly sunny skies for the next six days tells him that a good part of the agricultural community will be out in the fields mowing and baling hay.

“It’s supposed to be partly sunny to mostly clear through Monday,” Hagenbuch said. “I think people are going to be putting up a lot of hay in the next few days. Some people have been getting their (mowed) hay turned just in time for it to get rained on again. Some folks are just waiting to cut it.”

Adding extra urgency to the desire to get the hay crop baled and stacked, Hagenbuch said, is the potential for regrowth in the mowed hay fields to allow cattle ranchers to get their livestock off stressed pastureland and set the cows to grazing in the fields.

From the Glenwood Springs Post Independent:

The city of Rifle is lifting restrictions on outside watering and irrigation. The end to restrictions took effect on Thursday, according to a press release issued by the city of Rifle.

From The Denver Post (Matt Stensland):

During a two-week period in the beginning of July, drought conditions for parts of Routt County were upped to “exceptional,” a rating that state climatologist Nolan Doesken has said is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” According to the Palmer Drought Index, the area needed between 6 and 9 inches of rain to return to normal moisture levels.

Almost as soon as drought conditions were categorized as “exceptional,” monsoonal moisture started arriving in the region and resulted in more than 3 inches of rain in Steamboat Springs during July. After two weeks of “exceptional” drought conditions, the rating was lowered to “extreme.”

From the Northern Colorado Business Report (Steve Lynn):

The index, a mathematical average of indices for new orders, production, sales, employment, inventories and delivery lead time, declined from 57.2 in June to 56.1, according to Creighton University’s Goss Institute for Economic Research. The good news? The index in June remained above a growth neutral rating of 50 for the 33rd straight month, meaning the region’s economy remains healthy overall…

At the time of the survey, weather conditions had not yet adversely affected companies in the mountain states, Goss Institute for Economic Research Director Ernie Goss said. “Only 14 percent of the firms reported that drought conditions had increased the costs of inputs for their companies’ sales, while almost none reported impacts on company sales,” Goss said. “I expect this to change in the months ahead, pulling the overall index lower.”

From CoCoRaHS via the Fort Collins Coloradoan:

CSU and its volunteer network, called Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHs, is donating the devices as a means to educate students about the importance of taking scientific measurements and to bolster precipitation data collection efforts.

Teachers who would like to obtain a rain gauge and receive training on how to use it should contact education@CoCoRaHs.org for more information, according to a news release from CSU. Training webinars are scheduled on the following days:

• 10 a.m. Wednesday: To register, visit bit.ly/N671bp.

• 4:30 p.m. Aug. 20: To register, visit bit.ly/Oulj81.

Between Sept. 5 and 11, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, plans to host “Rain Gauge Week.” During this time, the group will encourage participating schools to submit their measurements.

Data collected by CoCoRaHs, which formed after the 1997 Spring Creek Flood in Fort Collins and now has 16,000 volunteers in the U.S. and Canada, helps predict flooding on the Missouri River and verifies satellite data on crop health, among other uses.

From CBS Denver:

“You have to be really careful how you use your water this year,” said Fagerberg Farms employee Rod Weimer. “This year it’s been really tough because the ground started off really dry.”[…]

Weimer said the water situation is concerning but they’ll have to wait until harvest to see how their crops will yield without the benefit of enough water.

From the Associated Press (Jim Suhr) via The Durango Herald:

More than half of U.S. counties now are classified by the federal government as natural disaster areas mostly because of the drought. The U.S. Agriculture Department on Wednesday added 218 counties in a dozen states as disaster areas. That brings this year’s total to 1,584 in 32 states, more than 90 percent of them because of the drought.

From the Grand Junction Free Press (Denis Reich):

In 2012, we’ve had the worst year for snow-pack runoff in some time, perhaps since the late 1970s. Many stream beds are already down to a trickle. Still, irrigators aren’t sure how to classify 2012 as a water year. In some ways, it’s clearly a bad drought: scarce snow pack, warm winter, low soil moisture, dry conditions and large wildfires. But the picture is complicated by reservoir storage and, to a lesser degree, the recent monsoon rains.

From high altitude tributaries all the way to Mexico, there is a network of reservoirs in the Colorado River basin. There’s a largely invisible world of horse-trading that allows water to be released from one reservoir to the next so rivers and canals can flow, regardless of what conditions might have naturally been. Perhaps your grandfather remembers the confluence of the Uncompahgre and Gunnison Rivers being dry in August, but it’s been many decades since it’s happened.

One of the wettest years on record in 2011 left local reservoirs nearly full heading into 2012. This is what’s keeping water flowing now, unlike in 2002, which followed a dry year. Releases from Taylor, Blue Mesa and Ridgway reservoirs are maintaining just enough flow to prevent the Gunnison Tunnel, which carries water into the Uncompahgre Valley, from putting a call on the river that would cut off water to junior users upstream. It’s a good thing, too, for hay producers. Prior to recent rains, the Gunnison County hay crop was under serious threat. As it is, they will probably get a cutting of sorts and limp into the fall.

What is truly concerning is the risk of a curtain call from the drought in 2013. In 2003, we were about two months from apocalyptic drought and were saved mid-March by a record-breaking snow storm. With residual soil moisture only slightly replenished by the recent rains, another below average year would create significant problems. Consecutive years of drought are unusual in Colorado, but not unheard of. We just had two 30-year extremes back to back and that is exceptionally unusual.

Click on the thumbnail graphics for the U.S. Drought Monitor maps for the last three weeks. It appears that the monsoon is alleviating the Colorado drought.

From the Summit County Citizens Voice (Bob Berwyn):

July ended up being the hottest ever for Denver, breaking the previous record by 1.1 degrees, based on statistics going back to 1872. The average temperature for the months was 78.9 degrees, topping the Dust Bowl-era record of 77.8 degrees set in 1934…

And while the monsoon delivered plenty of moisture in the mountains, mostly west of the Continental Divide, Denver stayed very dry, officially reporting only .48 inches of rain, less than 25 percent of the average 2.16 inches for the month.

Click on the thumbnail graphic for the Urban Drainage precipitation map for the Boulder area for the last 30 days.

From the Longmont Times-Call:

Matt Kelsch, a meteorologist at the University Corp. for Atmospheric Research, said Boulder, as of Monday, had received 4.99 inches of rain this month. The record was set in July 1919 with 7.46 inches, followed by the second-wettest July in 1965, with 5.2 inches. The thunderstorms also cooled off the city enough to keep this July from breaking heat records — unlike Denver, which is expected to close out its hottest month ever recorded.