Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily News website (Eili Wright). Here’s an excerpt:
The southern half of Summit County has been lifted from drought status as of the morning of Sept. 6., according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The line begins just south of Ute Peak, stretches along Interstate 70 and ends around Chalk Mountain, a Lake County landmark slightly south of the Summit County border. A quick glance at the map shows the boundary between the southern area of the county that is out of drought and the northern half of the county is only “abnormally dry” a slightly curved, vertical line that encapsulates every town south of Silverthorne…
Summit County was last relieved from a drought in the spring of 2019, ending in the spring of 2020. The last time a drought was lifted in the fall was in 2013…This summer’s monsoonal rains are what changed the tide. Precipitation levels at Hoosier Pass, south of Breckenridge received the “second wettest June through August” on record, [Peter] Goble reported. The difference was the prolonged and spread out nature of this summer’s monsoonal rains, said Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center wildland fire meteorologist Valerie Meyers. The consistency of the rains gave the county a chance to catch up on moisture from last summer, she added.
