From The Watch (Samantha Wright):
In Ouray, National Weather Service recorder Karen Risch reported, “Historically, we should be at 15.28 inches for the calendar year, and we are currently at 15.10. We have made up 2.5 inches in last two months. It has been a pretty dramatic turnaround.” The month of July typically brings 2.13 inches of precipitation to Ouray, Risch said, compared to 3.28 inches in 2013. August’s average is 2.33 inches, compared to 3.58 inches this year.
But those figures tell only part of the story. The National Weather Service measures annual accumulated precipitation in two ways – by calendar year and by water year. The water year is measured annually from October through September. And a month shy of the conclusion of the 2012-13 water year, Ouray is still four inches below average. While the town’s historical annual precipitation per water year is 23.05 inches, Ouray has received only 19.19 inches of precipitation so far for the current water year. In short, “We are nowhere near making up from last year’s drought,” Risch said…
Forecaster Jim Daniels out of the National Weather Service’s Grand Junction office said that a similar story is unfolding across the region, with above-average monsoonal rainfall in July and August helping to bring accumulation to near-normal to slightly above-normal levels for this calendar year…
Weather observers at the Montrose Airport measured 2.08 inches of rainfall in July, and 1.29 inches in August, considerably up from the average monthly levels of .83 inches and .88 inches, respectively. Total precipitation for the calendar year so far, measured at the same location from January through August 2013, is 6.02 inches, compared to an average of 4.65.
Ridgway, like Ouray, is still slightly below average for the calendar year, with an accumulated total of 10.18 inches of precipitation from January through August, compared to an average of 11.31.