We've seen more rain in the last two weeks than in the previous 5 months

Indexed: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Thankfully, the rain and snow is finally putting a dent in our drought. Senior meteorologist Chris Bianchi is here.

[00:00:06]Chris, this is more moisture I feel like than we've seen in months.

[00:00:10]Yeah, I have some very good news here in mind and kind of want to compare it over what we've seen over the last few months. So, this this to me is a pretty striking stat. Since May the 5th, so that's last 2 weeks in Denver and these are downtown stats here at the 9 News backyard. We picked up about an inch and a half of precipitation since May the 5th. The previous 151 days combined, December the 4th through May the 5th, 1.43 inches of rain and snow equivalent.

[00:00:36]So, in the last 2 weeks we picked up more rain and snow equivalent than the previous 5 months combined. I think it's a pretty striking stat. If that's not striking to you, take a look at this. In Fort Collins in the last 2 weeks, you picked up more rain and snow equivalent than the previous 7 months combined going back to late September through early May. That is a really striking number here, folks. So, we're seeing enough rain here that we're not only putting a dent into the drought, but we're putting a pretty serious dent into those year-to-date gaps. So, this upcoming drought monitor update, the just as a reminder, the drought monitor this map, this gets refreshed every Thursday, but it is based on data through the previous Tuesday morning. Of course, it's Tuesday, that means all the rain that we picked up yesterday and this morning will be reflected in this and I expect up here in northeastern Colorado some considerable erosion in the drought. So, some good news coming up. I do expect that on Thursday we'll probably see I think some cutting of those drought conditions across northeastern Colorado. So, we're denting the drought. I also want to be clear, this is good news. We have not solved the drought. Remember, this goes back to really last July and August. So, this is about 9-month drought at this point and 2 weeks of beneficial precipitation isn't going entirely solve it. I kind of want to conclude with something that I think is really important to note though is that usually when we get these big rain or precipitation events, it's usually coming with some sort of a headache. It's usually in the form of maybe a big hail event or severe weather or it's like 2 weeks ago with that branch snapping sort of snow or sometimes flooding.

[00:02:08]This is what I would like to leave you with here, folks. I feel like I've been Mr. Bad News all winter long. I'm actually presenting some good news because we're getting a lot of rain, but there's basically no headaches this week, right? If you're going to the Rockies game tonight, probably not going to be a lot of fun there because it'll be cold and drizzly and rainy, but we're not talking about any serious headaches, right? We're not talking about a lot of power outages or severe weather. We're just getting rain and it's hopefully here for Kim and Phil, some pretty good news overall.

[00:02:35]We can deal. We can deal with a little bit. That's nothing. Okay. Thanks, Chris. Yeah.