Colorado Learns Thursday How Much The Blizzard Improved State's Drought Situation

THURSDAY UPDATE: Historic Repeat: Like 2003, March Blizzard Of 2021 Helps Ease Drought On Colorado's Front Range

DENVER (CBS4) - Prior to the fourth largest snowstorm in Denver history arriving last weekend, nearly 99% of Colorado was experiencing at least moderate drought and the entire Front Range had severe or extreme drought.

Drought usually takes months to develop and typically takes just as long to eventually disappear. So while the weekly drought monitor scheduled to be released Thursday morning will likely illustrate improvement, drought will certainly continue to exist in Colorado. This is particularly true for areas west of the Continental Divide where far fall less snow fell during the monster storm.

Snow totals along the Front Range from the storm that arrived Saturday and departed early Monday ranged from at least 6 inches for many areas on the Eastern Plains to more than 3 feet in the foothills. The official snow total for Denver was 27.1 inches which made it the biggest blizzard to impact Denver in 18 years.

Equally as impressive was how much liquid the snow contained. The extremely wet snow resulted in a total of 2.88 inches of liquid precipitation in Denver or about 20% of the annual average. In just 2 days! Total liquid measured since the start of the year has now reached 4.24 which is a record. Denver has never had so much liquid from January 1 to March 15 in recorded history.

Total snowfall for the season has also reached 60.8 inches which is about 20 inches above normal through the middle of March.

The hope is record precipitation in March could help decrease the upcoming summer wildfire danger.

All of this bring great anticipation about the drought update that will be released Thursday morning. We'll have it on CBS4 This Morning as soon as it's released likely before 7 a.m. Thursday.