This year’s minimal monsoon made a couple of short appearances this month, but overall just 0.97 inches of rain fell, 48% of the new normal, 2.04 inches.

These recent storms sparked dry lightning and thunder shows, though we’d much rather have had real monsoon weather this summer, with Boletes popping in the hills and lush green gardens.

Instead, everything’s bone dry after a barely wet but significantly hot summer: 2.55 inches of rain fell from July 1 through September 26, just 35% of Ouray’s monsoon normal, 7.4 inches. The only skimpier monsoon on record occurred in 1979 with 1.89 inches.

All three monsoon months this year were much hotter than even the new climate normals (2006-2020). July days were the most extreme, averaging 84.5 degrees: 4.6 above normal (79.9). Nights averaged 2.5 degrees warmer, 54.8. Normal is 52.3.

August’s days and nights weren’t quite as extreme: days averaged 80 degrees, 3.1 degrees warmer than normal (76.9). Nights averaged 53.4, 2.2 degrees above normal (51.2).

September has been unusually warm, as well. As of the 26th, days average 72.1 degrees, 1.6 above normal (70.5). Nights average 46.5 degrees, also 1.6 degrees above normal (44.9).

Very little precipitation is predicted for these last days of September. The first week of October, though, should be cooler and wet. Last Friday’s three-to-four week forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for Oct.

7-20 shows equal chances of average temperatures and precipitation the second and third weeks of the month. Ouray’s October days average 58.3 degrees; nights average 34. Precipitation averages 2.2 inches with 6.1 inches of snow.

Colorado’s Water Year 2023 ends Saturday, Sept. 30. From Oct. 1, 2022 to Sept. 26, 2023, Ouray recorded 21.05 inches (new normal water year is 24.07).

Though summer 2023 was dry for southwestern Colorado, that wasn’t true for all of the state. The northern Front Range and northeastern Colorado plains experienced their wettest year in 128 years — since 1895 -— when the state began keeping records, according to assistant state climatologist Becky Bollinger at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University.

(Marianne Goodland, “Water Watchers Celebrate the Wettest Year,” The Colorado Springs Gazette, September 20, 2023) Record storms, particularly in June, produced the most severe weather reports on record, Bollinger said, “The 310 reports included thunderstorms and flash floods, as well as active thunderstorms with 2-inch-diameter hailstones.” By contrast, Alamosa in the San Luis Valley and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains showed “some of the driest conditions on record.” Alamosa “had its driest summer ever.”

And, at the end of September, past the autumn equinox, scientists around the world worry that “After months of record planetary warmth, temperatures have become even more abnormal in recent weeks — briefly averaging close to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a global warming threshold leaders are seeking to avoid.” (Scott Dance, “Why September’s record-warm temperatures have scientists so worried,” The Washington Post, September 23, 2023) The “deepening El Niño climate pattern” and record warmth may be “a sign that temperatures will continue to accelerate beyond old norms in the year ahead, scientists said. El Niño, which began to appear this spring, is known for raising global temperatures by releasing vast stores of Pacific Ocean heat into the atmosphere,” writes Dance.

“I thought we had seen exceptional temperatures back in July,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead for the payment company Stripe. “What we’ve seen this week is well above that.” There is now “near-certainty that 2023 will be Earth’s warmest on record.” This “heightens threats of the extreme conditions the heat could fuel around the world.”

The “’routine global climate assessments that NASA and NOAA perform weeks and months after the fact’” are increasingly supported by scientific agencies around the world.” Dance notes that “One such analysis produced by the Japanese Meteorological Agency shows that, this month, global temperatures have persistently diverged from 1991-2020 averages by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).”

Hausfather said that “the 1991-2020 average is, itself, about 0.9 degrees warmer than levels observed before the Industrial Revolution and the widespread burning of fossil fuels.” Combine the two and it’s obvious the world is “inching closer, at least briefly, to warming thresholds that global leaders have pledged to avoid.”

“Unfortunately,” writes Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, (formerly Woods Hole Climate Center in Falmouth, MA) “decades of burning fossil fuels and deforestation have pumped heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, and the vast majority of that heat is absorbed by the oceans. We’re now seeing the wrath of that heat as it’s unleashed back to the atmosphere.” I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is. — Greta Thunberg Karen Risch gardens, records weather for NOAA and CoCoRahs, writes and hikes in Ouray. Her Wunderground weather station ID is KCOOURAY3, transmitting weather from latitude N38 1’ 34”, longitude W107 40’21”, Elevation 7,736’. A purpleair.com air quality monitor RISCH operates at the same location