Colorado Endures 15-Month Heat Streak Worsening Drought

Glenwood Springs —"One of the things that struck me the most about this summer is the consistency of the heat," Peter Goble, Colorado State Assistant Climatologist, said. He wasn’t talking about a single afternoon when the mercury spiked and then broke; he was describing an unbroken, relentless pressure that sat on the state from June through August. Goble wrote for the Post Independent to explain a summer that felt less like a season and more like a sustained fever.

For the people living in the high valleys, that consistency had a physical weight to it. In Dillon, Goble noted that only seven of the 92 days throughout the summer were cooler than the average over the past three decades. Even on those rare, brief dips, the air wasn’t truly cool; it was merely less punishing. On June 30, temperatures hovered five degrees below the historical norm, a fleeting reprieve before the real assault began. Then came days like July 27 and August 22, when the heat soared 11 degrees above average. You can feel that difference in your skin, a dry, stinging heat that doesn’t break with the wind.

The Post Independent reported that this wasn't an isolated blip but part of a 15-month streak where every single month has been warmer than the 1991-2020 average, according to the Colorado Climate Center. The heat was most intense through the western two-thirds of the state, where nearly every location experienced its hottest June through August. Goble pointed out that in a typical Colorado summer, you’d see a cold front roll through every couple of weeks, bringing relief and moisture. This year, that rhythm vanished. There was no break in the heat.

That lack of relief compounded a crisis already brewing from the winter before. Colorado entered the summer with widespread, severe drought driven by record-low snowpack. While August precipitation was closer to normal, total rainfall across the three summer months trended below average in the mountains. The heat didn’t just dry out the air; it baked the ground, worsening drought conditions and driving rivers and reservoirs to record-low levels. For locals, this meant tangible impacts on water supplies, agriculture, and recreation. The dryness also fueled extreme fire danger, contributing to erratic wildfire behavior in major blazes like the Aspen Acres Fire, which destroyed more than 300 homes, as well as the Gold Mountain Fire outside Ouray and the Willow Fire near Leadville.

Goble explained that the combination of a dry winter, low snowpack, and a hot summer created a perfect environment for fire weather. "With a dry winter followed by a hot summer, you also end up with dry soils and over the long run that does impact the health of our forests," he said. The heat made fossil fuel pollution’s role in these trends more likely, according to climate scientists cited by the Post Independent.

As we look back on these months, the memory isn’t of a few hot days, but of an entire season defined by a sky that never quite cleared and a ground that never quite cooled. The dust still hangs in the air, fine and golden, settling on every surface in the valley.