The National Weather Service is predicting similar conditions over the weekend with only a slight chance of snow at the beginning of next week.įrank Cooper, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Boulder, Colorado, said a La Nina weather pattern is pushing storm tracks farther north into the Pacific Northwest and Canada, allowing highs in the Denver area to reach into the 70s. … I don’t think I’ll be snowboarding anytime soon.”ĭenver’s high Wednesday hit 73 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celsius), tying the record set in 1973. “Today I figured that on the first day of December it would be snowing, at least something, but here we are. “I’m from central New York so I expected it to be somewhat like there, which they have about 5 feet of snow right now,” said Greenough, 27, who was wearing a tank top and exercise shorts. But on Wednesday, he was enjoying the warm weather in a city park.
And we continue to add to this deficit year after year, particularly in the Colorado River Basin,” said Keith Musselman, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder.ĭerek Greenough moved to Denver a few months ago and immediately bought a snowboard with the hope of soon hitting the slopes. “Every day that goes by that we don’t see precipitation show up and we see this year-to-year persistence of drought conditions, it just adds to a deficit. It also could hurt tourism, which relies heavily on skiers, snowboarders, rafters and anglers.
The warm and dry weather has drawn crowds to restaurant and bar patios in Denver, and the city’s parks and trails have been bustling with people basking in the sunshine in shorts, short sleeves and occasionally flip flops.Īs enjoyable as the weather is, climate scientists and meteorologists are warning that prolonged drought could threaten the region’s water supply and agriculture industry. It’s only the second time since 1976 that Salt Lake City has gone snowless through November, and amid the unseasonably warm weather in Montana, a late-season wildfire fueled by strong winds ripped through a tiny central Montana farming town this week. The scenario is playing out across much of the Rocky Mountains, as far north as Montana and in the broader Western United States, which is experiencing a megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.