Storms in early May totaling 0.97 inch of rain pushed Cortez over its average precipitation for the month.
“Not too bad for the first nine days of the month,” said Jim Andrus, a weather watcher in Cortez for the National Weather Service.
Thirty year averages expect 0.93 inches for the month; we’re 0.04 inches over that a little more than a week in.
The most rain fell on May 6 – what Andrus called “the busiest part of the storm” – and totaled 0.69 inches.
He said there was “five days in a row measuring something” during that storm.
By the end of May, the year-to-date average precipitation is typically at 4.53 inches. As of May 9, the city’s at 3.2 inches of precipitation for the year, so there’s still room for more rain.
Andrus said a weather system out of the Pacific Northwest might make its way to Cortez around Wednesday, May 14, and joked that “if wind was rain, we’d be well above average by now.”
To be sure, we’re still far from being out of drought – when asked if we’re close to escaping that status, Andrus said, “Heaven’s no.”
In the “weather casino,” he said, “pulling the slot machine, we hit the jackpot once” with the storms in early May.
“Let’s hope the rain slot machine can deliver more jackpots by the end of the month,” he said. “The past few days, we sure hit the jackpot – it went, Ding! Ding! Ding!”
