Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Gabrielle Wallace). Here’s an excerpt:
September 2, 2026
Durango experienced a drier-than-normal August…The month of August accumulated 0.28 inches of precipitation, 0.12 inches of which occurred Monday. Monday was the highest precipitation day of August, Gillian Felton, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Grand Junction office, said. August traditionally averages closer to 1.3 inches of rain, according to the weather service, and precipitation this August was down about an inch comparatively. A plethora of reasons contributed to the dry spell, said Brooke Scholtens, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Grand Junction.
“For the earlier parts of the summer, we were experiencing those drought-like conditions,” she said. “So that makes things incredibly difficult, especially since the pushes that we did see of the monsoon, most of the time, we had dry air in the way that was kind of preventing moisture from entering the region.”
This monsoon has been drier than traditional years, Scholtens said. She added that the weather service measures moisture at Durango-La Plata County Airport, so some areas around Durango may have differing precipitation levels…Monsoons don’t have a specific end date, but it usually wraps up mid- to late-September, Scholtens said…According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, 91.6% of La Plata County is in a severe drought and 8.4% of the county is in an extreme drought. Durango has been in Stage One water restrictions since early April as part of the city of Durango’s Drought Management Plan.
