climate

Rain and thunderstorms that have helped improve drought conditions in eastern Colorado since the end of July largely came to an end last week, while the western half of the state continued to bake under warm temperatures.

Nearly half of Colorado remains in extreme and exceptional drought, the two worst categories. South central and much of the west slope have been suffering under a lack of moisture for most of the year, while the northeast benefited from a late season blizzard and periodic rain to reach drought-free conditions over the summer.

Drought conditions continued to improve across a large part of Baca County, and portions of Prowers, eastern Las Animas and the southeast corner of Bent County.

It was a different story for western Montrose and most of Ouray counties, where conditions continued to deteriorate. In both cases, exceptional drought - the worst category - overtook extreme conditions that had been in place for months.

Extreme and exceptional drought - the two worst categories - continue to impact nearly half of Colorado.

Some improvement was observed in central Colorado as moderate drought turned to just abnormally dry conditions for southern Douglas and northwest El Paso counties during the past week. Similar improvements were also seen in smaller portions of southwest Elbert, northeast Teller and the southern tip of Jefferson counties.

In south central Baca County, severe drought dropped to moderate conditions.

Hot and dry conditions have contributed to significant expansion of extreme drought in northwest and west central Colorado over the past week.

Extreme conditions grew to encompass the remainder of Garfield and Gunnison counties, as well as all of Rio Blanco and Pitkin counties. Most of Eagle, Summit and Chaffee counties also entered extreme drought, in addition to portions of Lake, southwest Grand, west central Clear Creek and southern Jackson and Moffat counties.

After several weeks of frequent rain and thunderstorms, drought conditions across southeast Colorado began to show substantial improvement.

Extreme drought, which has covered much of the southern third of the state this year, moved out of Prowers and Baca counties. Extreme conditions also gave way to severe drought for large portions of Las Animas, Bent, Otero, and Pueblo counties, as well as smaller portions of neighboring counties.

A remaining pocket of exceptional drought in Pueblo, Crowley, Kiowa, Bent and Otero counties dropped to extreme drought. 

Two weeks after all of Otero County, and portions of neighboring counties, moved in to exceptional drought conditions, a series of storms moved part of the impacted area back into extreme drought.

While all of Otero moved into exceptional conditions two weeks ago, the worst drought category receded from the southern two-thirds of the county this week, along with all be the northwest corner of Bent County, the southeast corner of Pueblo County, and parts of northern Las Animas County.

After a week that showed a drought conditions dramatically degradeacross Colorado, a small area showed slight improvement in the central part of the state.

Southern Jefferson County, along with slivers of Park and Douglas counties, moved into abnormally dry conditions, an improvement from moderate drought.

While portions of southeast Colorado border counties showed some improvement in drought conditions, a new area of "exceptional drought" - the worst category - appeared elsewhere in the region.

Eastern Kiowa, Prowers and Baca counties showed improvement over the previous week, moving to moderate and severe drought. A small portion of northeast Kiowa County shifted into abnormally dry conditions, while much of Baca County has shed extreme drought over the past month as early summer storms continue to bring much-needed moisture to the area.

Morten Wendelbo, Texas A&M University

During the 2017 disaster season, three severe hurricanes devastated large parts of the U.S.

The quick succession of major disasters made it obvious that such large-scale emergencies can be a strain, even in one of the world's richest countries.