Drought Monitor Update: big improvements for southern CO.

10/29/26 11:30am: Hi. Busy morning after a little preventative medical procedure (related to my butt lol). Anyway, on Thursday the new drought monitor is updated and its good news for parts of CO...

As you may have suspected (after all the heavy rain down there), most of southern CO an especially southwest CO is now completely drought free!

Also some noticeable improvements on the western slope and eastern plains dropping down into the more D1-D2 categories.

For northern CO a mixed bag as we just have not had that much precip... But still some improvement for the Den/Bou front-range areas from D4 to more like D2-D3 in many spots.

Some minor improvement for the north-central mountains but mostly along/east of the Cont. Divide.

And stil major drought problems (D4) in much of Summit and Eagle counties and surrounding areas.

But the big take away change is numbers over the last 3-months are:

D1-D4 went from 91% -> 50%

D2-D4 went from 82% -> 59%

D3-D4 went from 51% -> 13%

I have also included a look at the previous 60-day precipitation totals (analysis, image 1) along with 60-day Percent of Normal Precipitation (analysis, image 2) from ACIS Climate site....

Much of southern CO has had about 250-300% of normal precip in the last 60-days.

That is contrast to 25-90% for the northern front-range and parts of northeast CO.

As I mentioned we are early in the cold-season (later fall, winter, spring) and have a ways to go. I do think parts of northern CO will catch up, especially the front-range. Time will only tell.

What are your thoughts on the drought and percent normal precip in the last 60 days?

Later tonight I'll have some updates on the approaching storm system and maybe even a first cut at a snowfall map (although it is still uncertain).