Remember how moist Colorado was in July of 2023? Me neither. But according to the drought trackers, it was one downpour after another, and Colorado ducks were wagging their tail feathers.
Which makes 2023 something of a high-water mark. That year, the drought map was soaked from Kansas to Utah. Since then the Colorado drought map has been red and orange–just like our relentless summer sun.
This arid summer, fish have been flopping about in muddy lakebeds, and “How Dry I Am” is the hit song of the season.
Now, we look to the western horizon for the thunderheads that spell relief.
I’d never heard of monsoon season until I moved to Colorado. My only personal experience of monsoon was in the Arundahti Roy novel The God of Small Things, which is set in a months-long downpour. It’s a great read if you crave that clammy feeling. They know all about that in India. But we’re here in Colorado, with our 12 inches of rain, annually. If we’re lucky.
Lately, we haven’t been lucky.
In the midst of this drought, I wondered where my next drink might come from, so I looked at the rainfall record in Colorado. Starting around 1900, we had two delicious decades of excessive rain.
That period was extensively tracked by water negotiators, who were dividing up the Colorado River for states in the western basin. The only problem: It hasn’t rained that much for the subsequent 100 years. So the drafters of the famed Colorado Compact were apportioning water that hasn’t been flowing since 1920.
Next stop: The dust bowl, which dried up the Roaring Twenties. It wasn’t roaring with rainfall, that’s for sure.
And yet, the water geniuses never did revise their numbers, so flow of the Colorado River remains largely fictional. And since they measured, an extra seventy million people moved out West.
And then there are our new neighbors, the data centers, which guzzle 800,000 gallons a day. No wonder we’re all thirsty, trying to drink up a river that doesn’t actually exist.
Maybe this year’s monsoon will help?
The Western Monsoon happens when a high-pressure system spins clockwise over the Great Plains, and a counterclockwise low grinds over southern California. That atmospheric squeegee sucks moisture out of the Gulf of California and delivers it to us on a wind-borne conveyor belt.
That's why, this afternoon, there may be a dark cloud building over the Rockies, threatening to dump sweet relief on your head, and mine.
This year, blessedly, our monsoon is back, after taking 2025 off. You can thank a related weather phenomenon, called El Niño. This weather pattern was first noticed by Mexican fishermen, when they felt ocean heat at Christmastime. So they called it El Niño de Navidad, or the Christmas baby. It's a wet weather pattern.
When they felt a chill, it became La Niña. Which leads to drought, at least in Colorado.
It's the Butterfly Effect, only with weather. One wing flap over central America and we’re doomed! Another, and we’re drenched!
This year, NOAA is calling for a Super El Niño, which could put us in an environmental snowglobe.
Or, not.
Now, I’m looking skyward for the next approaching monsoon, fed by the Super El Niño. Sadly, a summer rainstorm is unlikely to slake our thirst. The storms are too widespread to fill our reservoirs.
But when winter storms blanket the state, and then melt down? It’s a green revolution, and it just might happen next winter.
Don’t count on it, though. The Colorado state climatologist recently told the Colorado Sun: “The short answer is, we don’t really know.”
Our glass is half empty. Will it ever fill again?
