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Pack an umbrella with your lunch on Friday

Fourth of July expected to be sunny and clear
Dark clouds moving in over Durango on Thursday afternoon foretell a strong chance of precipitation Thursday night and all day Friday.

While it isn’t necessarily the start of the monsoon, rain moving through the area Friday means it is a good idea to take an umbrella.

“Earlier this week, it wasn’t looking like the classic monsoon pattern,” Megan Stackhouse, a meteorologist with the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service, said on Thursday afternoon. “It’s still not really a classic monsoonal flow, but it is pulling moisture from the south, from the Gulf of Mexico.”

The big day of the week’s storms likely will be Friday, with a 60 percent chance of precipitation during the day and night. There’s a 40 percent chance Saturday and 30 percent chance Saturday night. The storms are expected to move out in time to usher in a sunny Independence Day.

“In addition to the monsoonal flow, there’s a weak low moving in and bringing more moisture, which is why Friday is the big day,” Stackhouse said.

Durango may get 0.10 to 0.20 of an inch of precipitation during the day, with another 0.10 of an inch Friday night, she said, but higher terrain is likely to get more. Folks headed west to Montezuma County and southeast Utah for the holiday weekend should be aware that a flash-flood watch is in effect Friday afternoon and night. Dry creek beds, arroyos and canyons may not be so dry during that period, and flash floods, as seen recently in Texas and West Virginia, can be deadly.

The Climate Prediction Center released an update to the July forecast for Durango on Thursday, but it isn’t particularly enlightening.

“It’s an even chance,” Stackhouse said, “it could be either above normal precipitation or below normal precipitation. But they are predicting higher than normal temperatures for you through the month.”

Arizona got better news.

“There’s a bull’s-eye on Arizona for above normal precipitation,” Stackhouse said, “and it ends right on the border of Colorado.”

The region could use the above normal precipitation side of the equation.

For the year, because of an abnormally dry January and February, the area has received 2.47 inches below normal of precipitation as measured at the Durango-La Plata County Airport. June was dryer by almost half, with 0.36 inches received, 0.28 inches below average.

“That’s unless a really good cell moves in over the airport before midnight,” Stackhouse said.

May’s precipitation was above average. Durango received almost an inch, 0.96 inches, or 0.16 inches above normal.

abutler@durangoherald.com

Sep 15, 2015
3 dead, 4 missing in Zion National Park after flash flooding


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