GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO/KJCT)– Although we have gotten some rain in the valley recently, Mesa County has been upgraded from severe to extreme drought.
The National Weather Service says the county leveled up in the drought because of new data that becomes available every Thursday.
The new drought outlook comes from data that is updated on a weekly basis, and records information from the previous week.
Even though we have gotten some rainfall, the hot and dry conditions last week were enough to put the county in the extreme category.
“The data was only from July 10th.
So that was before we were getting into that unsettled pattern, and we were still hitting those triple-digit temperatures.
And we had some pretty extreme fire behavior across the region," said Meteorologist Megan Stackhouse.
Out of the five stages of drought, the extreme category is the fourth highest, and meteorologists are hopeful the county could go back down to lower stages when the next updated data comes out.