Colorado Weather: Drought conditions improve for Front Range

After picking up monsoon-produced thunderstorm over the last few weeks, the Front Range mountains and foothills of Colorado have seen the the drought threat go away for the first time since early April. That's according to this week's state drought monitor released by the National Drought Mitigation Center.

At the same time conditions have also improved for cities along the northern I-25 corridor from the Denver metro area up through Fort Collins. Conditions are on the low end of the scale -- being abnormally dry to moderate.

Other areas are not so lucky. From Denver International Airport north to Greeley and out into the northeastern plains rain has been a little more scarce. Those areas are still locked in severe, extreme and exceptional drought -- with the worst conditions from northeastern Weld County across Sterling and Wray out to Nebraska and Kansas.

Overall, drought conditions have improved over most of the state with most of Southeastern Colorado and most of the southern and western mountains ranging from abnormally dry to moderate (which is a huge improvement from the start of the summer). Lower elevations of the west including the Four Corners are still stuck in tough drought conditions with severe drought still locked in from Craig down thru Grand Junction, Montrose and Durango.

The Four Corners are in the deep red on the Drought Monitor map. That is the extreme drought category.