A first – we did Fire Weather Field training with the San Juan National Forest Pagosa District (select title of post to see picture)
Thursday – 5 June 2025 – 7:00pm
Included in this newsletter: Big Thank You Waves to Individual Donors & Our Sponsors; Community Outreach News; Calendar of events, and Contest Updates…
Personal Donations
Huge waves of thanks to folks who made donations in May! Special waves of thanks to: Lucinda Tagliareni and Mark Kircher.
What your generous donation goes towards…
Your donations help us take care of our website manager, Fluid Elements, the Pagosa Weather website, commercial weather subscriptions, and other business expenses. Most importantly your donations ensure that we will be able to provide this FREE service for everyone for years to come!
To make a donation, click on this link: How to Donate. You can donate by PayPal, Visa or MasterCard through Square, or send a Check to: Pagosa Weather, 135-F Country Center Dr. #142, Pagosa Springs CO 81147. Thank you so much for your generosity!
Shawn and I have been truly touched by the support our followers have shown for us! THANK YOU!!!
Sponsors
We LOVE our Sponsors! They just amaze us with their support!
This Month’s featured sponsor: Terry’s Ace Hardware!!! Master gardeners, Chris and Jane, were at Terry’s Ace the day before Mother’s Day to help little ones to paint their own flower pots as gifts.
We are always thankful to Grace and Terry’s Ace for being one of our Snowman Sponsors and all their support. Plus, their staff in every department is always very helpful.
For your yard, Ace has year-round Gardening supplies, seasonal outdoor Nursery, Grass, Garden and Flower seed, specialty potting Soils, seasonal Mulch, Soil, Rock, Sand, Landscape pavers, flagstone and fencing plus outdoor Grills and accessories. Now, is the time stock up for those yard projects!
Three little gardeners painting pots for Mother’s Day at Terry’s Ace Hardware
2025 Sponsors! (Click on the sponsor’s name to follow link to their website.)
Blizzard Level Sponsor: Ski & Bow Rack
Snowman Level Sponsors
Terry’s Colorado Home Supply & Ace Hardware
Snowball Level Sponsors
Peggy Andrews, Independent Real Estate Broker
Dr. Leo Milner, D.C., Chiropractic Services
Pagosa Wilderness + Pagosa Rafting Outfitters + A1Taxi
Storm Sponsor: The Springs Resort
Community Outreach! May was a fun month! It was so good to see and meet so many of you out in the community!
Monsoon ’25 Outlook
Our Monsoon ’25 Outlook in the Southern San Juans presentation was at the Ruby Sisson Library as part of the the Lifelong Learning program. We discussed how the North American monsoon forms and how it impacts the Southern San Juan Mountains. And I presented my monsoon forecast for this summer – which looks good.
I started the talk with a quick review of our winter which generated a very interesting discussion. The only positive is that we have not had one abysmal winter followed by another abysmal winter.
Our friend and CoCoRaHS observer, Chuck was there and he video taped the presentation for us. However, we are having technical difficulties getting it uploaded to our web site. We’ll let you know when it is there for folks that we not able to join us that afternoon.
Huge thanks to Judy and the rest of the team at the library for inviting us to talk and getting the area all set up for us!
Chimney Rock
We were in invited to speak at the Chimney Rock Interpretive Association’s Volunteer (CRIA) Orientation. It was a great opportunity to speak about thunderstorm safety with a fairly large group of CRIA volunteers. Chimney Rock National Monument is a huge lightning rod. So we talked about the thunderstorm life cycle and how to estimate thunderstorm movement. And of course we talked about lightning safety.
Huge thanks to Lace for the invitation to speak with the association. We received great feedback from the Chimney Rock Association on how useful the information we shared was for the volunteers.
“You were truly a delight: Informative and entertaining! Thanks for making us safe at “the rock” this year!”
We look forward to speaking with them every year in helping them with the great work they are doing!
Arleen briefing at Chimney Rock Interpretive Association’s Volunteer Orientation .
San Juan USFS Pagosa District Field Training
Shawn and I got outside with the San Juan USFS Pagosa District, Fire crews for their field training day at the end of May. Some of the fire fighters were deployed to Michigan. Some of them were working the Freeman Fire. We so appreciate the hard work of these dedicated crews.
This field training was unique to our normal talks supported by pretty slide shows. I talked about clouds and thunderstorm lifecycle. A field of pretty cumulus to the north helped out by growing vertically throughout the presentation to towering cumulus. Later that day they had grown to isolated thunderstorms and sported a few lightning strikes.
I talked about how local winds form and how they affect the fire. I also talked about the different sorts of inversions and fronts and how it all interacts with and impacts wildfires.
We hope the crews found the information helpful in their mission. Training the fire crews is a priority for the Pagosa Weather Team. Huge thanks to Tracy Milakovic, the Pagosa District Fire Management Officer for the invitation to be part of the training week.
Pagosa Weather Calendar
- July 8th, Tuesday: Chimney Rock Youth Workshop
- October ???: Snow measurement training for CoCoRaHS Observers
- October or November: Winter Outlook event
If any teachers or organizations would like a Pagosa Weather class or presentation, send an email to Arleen at pagosaweather@gmail.com.
CoCoRaHS Newsletter Updates
Pagosa Weather is the Archuleta County “CoCoRaHS Coordinator” and “Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador”.
HELP! Do you or do you have a friend that lives in one of the six areas highlighted below?
Archuleta County is well represented but we still have BIG data gaps. We really need a volunteer in southern Hinsdale County, west Highway 160, Arboles, Pagosa Junction, Dulce, and Upper Blanco. Sign up by filling out this web page: https://www.cocorahs.org/application.aspx. Or send us a note and we can send you more detailed information.
Perhaps, our July Newsletter will show fewer red circles!
Weather Data Lovers, CoCoRaHS has released CoCoRaHS Data Explorer, or “DEx” for short. This tool provides countless new ways to visualize and analyze data. Note: it is highly recommended to use larger screens when viewing the DEx.
Click here to go to the DEx Station Search page for data access to any station in the database. (open to the public)
The red circles are areas we could use a CoCoRaHS observer. Let us know if you can give us 5 to 10 minutes every morning to measure precip and snow. CoCoRaHS provides all the training you need.
Note: We have a part time observer in the Upper Blanco. We’re looking forward to Ricky returning for the summer & monsoon season! However, we really need a full time CoCoRaHS observer up that way.
Pagosa Weather May SUMMARY & June Outlook
Follow to Shawn’s May Summary & Arleen’s June Outlook
Contest Updates
Special Thanks to our sponsor businesses that have stepped forward to sponsor our weather contests. They are a lot of fun!
Upcoming Contests
| Contest | Issue Date | Sponsor |
| 1st Inch of Snow | July 15th | Terry’s Ace |
| Two Feet Snow | Sep15th | Alley House |
| Wolf Creek Snow | Nov 15th | Ski &Bow Rack |
| 75 Degree | March 15th | Pagosa Mountain Sport |
Closed Contest – First 24″ of Snow Winter 2024/2025
Sadly, we never got up to 24″… However the winner was Kayla Cornish as determined by the Pagosa Weather Board.
The greatest snowpack depth that we had at the verification spot, 7 miles northwest of Pagosa in O’Neal Park just off of North Piedra, past the two cattle guards at 8,030 feet elevation, was 12″ at 8:00am on February 15th. Kayla Cornish was the closest with a date of February 14th at 10:00am.
The Pagosa Weather board has made the decision to award Kayla Cornish with the closest guess to the greatest amount of snowpack depth date/time with the $100 gift certificate to Alley House.
Huge “Thanks” to Joni, Martin, Landon, Alisa and the entire team at Alley House for their support and sponsoring this contest!
Closed Contest – When will we Hit 80 degrees
Abey Nelson was the winner of a $25 gift certificate from Pagosa Mountain Sports!!! Stevens Field hit 80 degrees May 30th around 2:00pm.
Huge thanks to Amanda, Coquette, Janine, Jake and the rest of the team at Pagosa Mountain Sports for sponsoring this Contest and their support of Pagosa Weather.
Active Contest – Monsoon!!!
Forecast the amount of measured rain that the Pagosa Springs area will receive during the monsoon season. This includes the months of July, August, and September, to the nearest 100th of an inch. If the monsoon starts earlier in June, Arleen and Shawn will determine the exact date that the monsoon set up and include that data from those dates. Note: this contest is closed to any new guesses.
The winner receives dinner for 2 at the Wild Finch restaurant from The Springs Resort!
The Springs Resort is also Pagosa Weather’s Storm Sponsor and are there with us through blizzards and significant monsoon storms. We are deeply grateful for their support!
Good Luck to everyone!
Bob Theodore 3.04
Bryan Weitzel 3.78
Clayton Rizzi 4.17
Paul Zeman 5.1
Mike Buckingham 5.16
Brady Turner 5.25
Troy Rettig 5.33
David Vedera 5.67
Frank Snyder 5.78
Stephanie Fluke 5.87
Ed H 6.18
Joanne Shelton 6.21
Melanie Fortner 6.25
Michelle Juneau 6.42
Peggy Andrews 6.77
Ken Rogers 6.85
Ashley Slagle 6.97
Susan Houseworth 7
Stephen Trammel 7.12
Mike Offerman 7.18
Chris Edwards 7.24
Rick Moore 7.57
Brenda Smith 7.7
Carol Holleran 7.77
Donna Lewis 7.81
Debbie Moore 8.1
Mark Langford 8.13
Phillip Slusher 8.47
Karen Vedera 8.56
Austin Marchand 8.76
Musetta Wollenweber 9.3
Jenny Yurechko 9.67
Adam Walker 10.17
Danette Vigil 10.5
Kim Page 15.73
Debra Kewley 21.5
laura Soden 100.26
Linsey Holt 125
– Arleen
