99 Percent Of Colorado Now In Drought Or Near-Drought Conditions
DENVER (CBS4) - The weekly drought data was released Thursday morning and it's not good. 99 percent of Colorado is now experiencing abnormal dryness or drought.
The percentage of the state with at least moderate drought has increased 42 percent from a week ago and now includes the entire Denver metro area.
Even worse, severe drought jumped 15 percent and now has a grip on nearly the entire Western Slope.
The data was calculated on Tuesday and therefore doesn't include most of the moisture from our recent storm. So it's possible we could see limited improvement particularly in southwest Colorado next week.
But in terms of the metro area, the rain and snow we saw Wednesday is unlikely to make much of a difference.
As of this morning we've seen 6.8 inches of snow this season in Denver. And that's nearly 17 inches below normal through Jan. 11.
Ashton Altieri is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist. Watch him on the CBS4 Morning News weekdays from 4:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. Connect with Ashton on Facebook and on Twitter @AshtonCBS4.
