Rainy Season

Westerly View from South 14th in Lamar

Quite a few local residents will tell you our region gets most of its moisture around April and May with spring rains.  That has been the case so far, as over the past several days, coupled with the brief showers from last night, the first week in May has seen more rain than the past month of April.

Portions of southeast Colorado were under a tornado warning for less than an hour. Issued by the National Weather Service out of Pueblo, conditions for a tornado were present until 6:30pm for an area around Hasty and McClave and a portion of Lamar.  The tornado never materialized, but local officials were out in force, keeping track of events, as evidenced by Lamar Fire Chief, Jeremy Burkhart, who was keeping an electronic and human eye on the progress of the storm at the end of West Yucca, overlooking the plains on the edge of Lamar.

Lamar Fire Chief Jeremy Burkhart Assesses Weather Developments

Several residents came by for a look themselves, including a couple from Oklahoma who were en route to parts west, when they heard the storm alerts on local radio, and had been tracking its progress on their ipad.  Chief Burkhart explained he was in radio contact with local storm spotters, was also monitoring the NWS radar screen on his ipad and would be able to sound the local sirens for an alert on his command radio.  “We’ve also got the ability to view lightning flashes with another app that tracks them inside of a second,” he explained.

Everyone was watching and reporting on any potential cloud rotation which would become the source for a tornado, but that movement was minor on Wednesday evening.  As the front approached from the west, the winds increased and the temperature dropped, bringing with it some pea-sized hail and another spring downpour, but the warning had expired by just a few minutes by that point.  Other portions of the southeast were not so lucky as more tornadoes struck in portions of Oklahoma and Kansas last night.  The Prowers County forecast registers anywhere from a 30% to a 50% chance of more showers from now til this Saturday.

Precipitation accumulations for the area are noted for all of April 2015, compared to the first six days of May.

April (all)             May 1-6

Lamar                    1.14                        1.72
Two Buttes          0.95                        2.46
Holly                     1.58                        1.65
Eads                       1.11                        3.14
McClave               0.96                        1.26
Springfield           0.72                        0.84
Walsh                    0.53                        0.62
La Junta               0.78                         1.14

By Russ Baldwin