After years of dry, drought-like summers, the recent rains might seem abnormal.
There has been periodic street flooding, water levels have been running high since June, and many areas of the Front Range have been much greener than in years past.
Bob Henson, a meteorologist and writer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said the cycle of afternoon rain or thunderstorms is to be expected this time of year.
“Denver’s climate in the summer time is classically sunny in the morning, cloudy in the afternoons with showers and thunderstorms. . . . What’s a little unusual this summer is how much rain we’ve gotten,” he said, noting the city came close to setting a rainfall record in June.
Henson said the unpredictable nature of weather is just that, and he can’t point to a certain set of conditions that can explain why this summer is wetter than previous ones.
“It’s a little hard to say sometimes what kicks off a moist pattern or dry pattern, but once they’re in place there’s a lot of self-perpetuation,” he said. “So once it is wet, it can tend to rain day after day, and the moisture can keep cycling through.”
Henson said it is unlikely that this wet weather is being driven by El Niño, unusually warm waters in the tropical pacific that can cause major atmospheric changes. Government forecasters say the latest cycle of El Niño officially began last week.
Henson said considering that timing, El Niño played no role in the June rains. But he said be on the look out come fall.
“What often happens in El Niño years is we get a big snowstorm somewhere around October or November.”
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