October is nearly half over, but temperatures are still peaking near the 80s this week.
While temperatures haven’t reached record-breaking heights in Southwest Colorado this fall, they’re hovering in the “top five” range in La Plata County, according to National Weather Service data.
Numbers produced from the automated system at the Durango-La Plata County Airport show the month of October 2015 so far has been the fourth-warmest October since the system was installed in 1996.
The warmest on record in that nearly 20-year period was in 2010 with an average of 56.1 degrees. The average is calculated by combining the high and low temperatures and dividing that figure in half.
Jeff Colton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, said based on data from the system located at the airport, the average temperature for the month so far has been 55.4 degrees.
Data from the same site shows the period of time from Sept. 1 to Oct. 11 this year as the second warmest since 1996 at an average of 59.8 degrees.
There is a second station at the Old Fort Lewis College campus near Hesperus where records date back to 1917, Colton said. That site reports an average of 60.3 degrees for the month of September. But this September has been the second warmest, beat only by September 1998 which saw a record-high average of 61.3 degrees.
“You’re sitting in the top five as far as warmest fall on record so far,” Colton said. A ridge of high pressure parked over the southwestern United States and a lack of moisture are both contributing factors.
“The pattern has been consistent,” Colton continued. “We’ve had low pressure off the West Coast and high pressure off the Rockies, and that hasn’t broken for about 40 days now.”
But it won’t last.
When El Niño starts acting as expected, the region and La Plata County will finish out this fall under much cooler, wetter conditions. This change is expected to start as early as the end of the month, Colton said.
“The biggest thing to think about is that climate is a measure of extremes,” he added. “We have periods of really warm weather and periods of really cold weather. When we average that out, even though it’s warm now, we’ll get cold weather later, and the average balances out.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
