What does wet May mean for wildfires?
After repeated afternoon showers — and intermittent barrages of hail — Denver has logged its fourth-wettest May on record, putting the precipitation in competition for one of the city’s wettest months in well over a century.
As of Wednesday morning, Denver had recorded 5.52 inches of rain, according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Bruno Rodriguez. And although more showers rolled through the metro area in the afternoon, not enough rain fell to nudge the city into one of the top three slots.
The three wettest Mays in Denver are:
• May, 1969, which recorded 6.12 inches.
• May, 1957, which recorded 7.31 inches.
• May, 1876, which recorded 8.57 inches. This is also the wettest month in Colorado history.
Much of the state’s eastern half also has enjoyed above-average rainfall, particularly along the Front Range and into the northeastern plains, Rodriguez said.
Some areas saw 3 to 5 inches more rain than usually falls, up to 200% of the normal precipitation. However, some areas in northwest Colorado saw an inch or two less rain than they typically receive, he said.
May is generally Colorado’s wettest month, said Becky Bollinger of Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center. And this year especially, the moisture is welcome.
Not only are the state’s dry soils — parched by years of drought — recharging but so too are reservoirs all around Col
orado, Bollinger said. At her own home, Bollinger said she noted 10 days in a row with measurable precipitation.
The excess rain might cause f looding in some areas, block travel or even muddy the planting season on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, but Bollinger said the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.
And more rain could be on the horizon, she added. June and July are, climatologically speaking, fairly wet months, and the state can expect more afternoon showers at least over the next two weeks.
“There’s hope on the horizon that it’s not going to completely dry out,” Bollinger said.
This time last year state officials warned that they were bracing for what could have been the worst wildfire year in Colorado’s history (a fear that ultimately didn’t materialize). And the vast majority of the state was suffering from drought conditions.
Now, the vast majority of the state has no drought classification and less than 1 percent of Colorado’s land is classified as in either extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U. S. Drought Monitor.
Bollinger said wildfire risk heading into the summer is far lower now and the state should have enough moisture to stave off the worst wildfire risk.
Although that’s good news for this year, it could also amount to a “doubleedged sword,” Bollinger noted. This year’s moisture that should keep major wildfires at bay also means a strong growing season across Colorado. The state — and the rest of the Colorado River Basin — still suffers from warming and drying trends, so new plants and foliage this year could just as easily dry out, adding to the amount of possible fuel for wildfires that might spark in the future.
A drying trend doesn’t appear to be an imminent risk, Russ Schumacher, director of the Colorado Climate Center, said.
The state appear s headed into an El Niño weather pattern over the summer, which should mean a relatively wet summer.
But the added fuels could add to the wildfire risk next summer as well, Schumacher noted.
“We know how quickly things can turn around here,” he said.
More realistically for the short term, Schumacher said the Front Range could see more widespread f looding, a far cry from the drought to which Colorado has become accustomed in recent years.
“We’ve kind of forgotten the kinds of floods we can get in the Front Range,” Schumacher said.
That flooding risk could be especially pronounced in areas scorched by wildfires, he added.