No Drought! Recent Rain Was Enough To Wipe Out Drought In Denver

DENVER (CBS4) - It was confirmed Thursday morning the widespread heavy rain that fell just after Memorial Day was enough to officially eliminate drought in Denver and along most of the Front Range.

The data used to compute the weekly drought monitor is collected each Tuesday. So the collection period had just ended when the rain started to fall on May 31 and that is why it's taken until this week for significant improvement to show up on the drought map.

A week ago the entire Denver metro area had moderate drought and there had been some stage of drought since April.

That has finally changed after 1-2 inches of rain fell on the final day of May and the first day of June. As of this week, Denver and the Front Range is officially considered to be "abnormally dry" which is the precursor to drought.

If mainly dry conditions continue in the coming weeks drought could cardinally return, but for now the elimination of drought is great news. Unfortunately, various stages of drought are still present elsewhere in Colorado especially in the southern regions of the state. The San Luis Valley for example has extreme drought which is the second worse drought category. And far southeast corner of Colorado near Oklahoma still has exceptional drought which is as bad as it gets.

There is a small chance for rain along the Front Range Thursday afternoon. The rain will be from isolated thunderstorms meaning nothing widespread. And with the first heat wave of the season starting Friday and continuing into early next week, it will be awhile before Colorado has any chance for widespread precipitation.