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Durango may have wet weekend

Chance of precipitation 60 percent on Saturday
Wyatt Bartel, 8, was out with his grandfather, Frank Montoya, playing catch Thursday afternoon at Durango High School. Wyatt’s parents are Rustin and Kristianna Bartel. Any baseball games might be called for the next couple of days. A chance of rain began Thursday night in Durango, and chances grow stronger through Sunday. Monday also holds a chance of precipitation.

For a couple of months, the prediction has been for a wetter spring than normal – and this weekend may offer proof.

“The uncertainty continues,” said meteorologist Joe Ramey of the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service on Thursday afternoon.

While this front may drop a dusting of snow on Fourteeners, there won’t be much accumulation to the snowpack. That may change with the second front that’s currently over British Columbia and poised to come through Saturday night and stick around into Monday morning, Ramey said.

“That storm should pack a pretty good precipitation punch, with snow down to 8,000 feet, but accumulation from 9,500 feet and upwards,” he said.

On Thursday afternoon, the weather service was predicting a 60 percent chance of precipitation Saturday night and a 70 percent chance Sunday in Durango, the highest likelihood for precipitation in more than a month.

“The uncertainty here is that storm is splitting, with some of the energy going to Wyoming and the rest dropping to Arizona and New Mexico, but we want them to come in one solid piece,” Ramey said. “When a storm dips down and starts speaking Spanish, as we say, Western Colorado isn’t going to get much out of it. But we think you’re in for a wet weekend.”

It’s also forecasted to get a little chillier, with Sunday’s high dropping to 50 degrees, with an overnight low of 32 degrees.

“The dynamical models are still showing the potential for a wet spring and for the monsoons to start early, like it did last year,” Ramey said. “The Climate Prediction Center is still saying that.”

And while weather watchers are pinning their hopes on an El Niño wet spring, it may be the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that makes it so. Measuring the warmth of the Pacific Ocean climate off southern Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, it reached record warmths in January and February, Ramey said. And March, although not a record-breaker, was still an “impressive” 2 degrees above normal.

“That’s really unusual, particularly since it’s agreed the PDO entered a cold phase in 2007,” he said. “And while an El Niño typically lasts six to 18 months, the Pacific Decadal generally lasts two to three decades. Of course, there are variations within those decades, but not usually record-breaking ones.”

When the water temperatures are above-average in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, that can also indicate a wetter spring than normal in Southwest Colorado, he said.

Fingers are crossed in Southwest Colorado that it lives up to its reputation.

abutler@durangoherald.com



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