This is in response to the Durango Herald Article about the heat.
It is highly unlikely the 100-degree COOP report was correct, the high at the airport that day was recorded at 83 degrees. August has had a few high temps above average and some below average, but you can’t just measure the highest days and come to a conclusion. You have to measure all days, both highs and lows to see what the daily temps really look like. Daily temps are the combination of the highs and the lows, anomalies are the departure from the sum of the average high and low for the day.
According to NOAA’s CDAS (Climate Data Assimilation System) here are the actual temperature daily anomalies for the last 20 days.
Here is a zoomed-in version
Am I nitpicking? Maybe but 5-7 degrees above normal is huge for actual daily temps and it is not correct in our case. This story may just be too early because warmer (daily) temps are forecasted for the next 2-4 weeks.
Here is what that looks like.
As far as moisture the longterm forecast shows below average precip through the end of August with slightly above-average moisture for the first half of September.
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