Aug 4, 2008 11:27 am US/Mountain
2008 Still On A Record Setting Dry Pace For Denver
DENVER (CBS4) ―
The 2008 calendar year is on pace to be the driest year ever for Denver.
Denver's driest year was 2002 when the city had 7.48 inches of precipitation. When you compare the two years, we've received less precipitation up to this point.
From January until Aug 3 we've only received 3.28 inches of precipitation.
The Phoenix metro area, which is normally much drier, had more precipitation than Denver during that period. In fact, the monsoon this year has really come through in Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas.
Some cities in New Mexico had already netted more than half of their normal annual rainfall in the first half of July alone.
Conditions are drier in Eastern Colorado, especially the southeastern plains.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, much the extreme southeastern corner of the state into the panhandle of Oklahoma and southwest Kansas have extreme to exceptional drought conditions.
The majority of the Front Range Foothills and the eastern Plains, including Denver are rated abnormally dry to moderate.
Long Range Forecast For Colorado
A new 30- and 90-day long range forecast for Colorado is released by the Climate Prediction Center each month. Get the whole story about the latest long range forecast from CBS4's forecasters.
Wildfires
Learn more about how wildfires happen and what can be done to combat them once they do. Several links on cbs4denver.com's Wildfire Resources section also provide important information if a wildfire is threatening your community.
Living Green
In a weekly feature on cbs4denver.com called Living Green, CBS4 meteorologist Jennifer Zeppelin shares advice on how you can make adjustments to your life that will benefit the environment. Watch
this week's video clip.
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