Thursday’s thunderstorm should have set a record when it dropped more than 3 inches of rain on some parts of Denver, but it didn’t because the National Weather Service changed its official recording point.
The previous record for rain on July 7 was set when 1.41 inches fell in 1988, when the Weather Service took its official measurements at Stapleton Airport. On Thursday, meteorologists recorded 3.17 inches of rain at the old airport site, more than twice the old record amount.
None of that matters, though, because Denver International Airport, the official observation point since 1995, received only 1.04 inches of rain Thursday.
Kyle Fredin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said scientists aren’t sure how the change in locations will affect their records in the long run.
DIA gets less rain than Stapleton, so it’s less likely to break precipitation records. But DIA tends to be hotter, making it more likely to break high-temperature records.
“We’re not going to know the big difference for 150 or 250 years,” he said.
The Weather Service switched its recording spots when DIA opened. Because of its large size, DIA required an automated sensor to constantly monitor conditions for the planes, Fredin said.
“That’s the end of an era,” he added. “The human aspect is pretty much removed.”
Stapleton relied on human measurements. Scientists continue to take data from the Stapleton site by hand twice a day.
Many scientists frequently still rely on hand measurements. Nolan Doesken, a state climatologist at Colorado State University, collects data from a network of volunteers, one of whom recorded 3.39 inches of rain near the Denver-Aurora border.
Monsoon season began about July 1 and is expected to run through the first or second week of August. This was one of the largest storms to hit the metro area since the season began.
“Denver waited, and they got the granddaddy of the storm,” Doesken said.
