Pueblo NWS Winter Weather Summary

The winter of 2021-2022 (December through February) started very warm with new record high temperatures being set across south central and southeast Colorado in the first few days of the December. A few strong weather systems moved across the Rockies through the middle and end of December, bringing abundant snowfall to the higher terrain along and west of the Continental Divide, especially across the southwest mountains where several feet of much needed snowfall was recorded through out the month of December. Unfortunately, these weather systems did not bring much, if any precipitation, to the drought stricken southeast plains, where strong winds and very warm temperatures through out the month only exacerbated the drought. This is especially true for the weather system moving across the state on December 15th, which brought widespread damaging winds of 80 to 100 mph to southeast Colorado (strongest recorded gust in KLAA of 107 mph in Lamar) causing widespread tree and powerline damage across the I-25 Corridor through the far southeast plains.

January started out cold and snowy across south central and southeast Colorado, as a passing storm system brought the first snow of the year across portions of south central and southeast Colorado on New Years Day. Upper level ridging building in behind the New Years storm system brought warmer and drier conditions for the next few days of January. An up and down weather pattern was then experienced across the region, as several weather systems moved across the state through the rest of January.

February again started out cold and snowy across south central and southeast Colorado, as an unseasonal cold weather system ushered in some of the coldest air of the winter season. Temperatures and precipitation across the region ebbed and flowed as several more weather systems moved across the Rockies through the middle of February, bringing bouts of snowy and cold weather to much of south central and southeast Colorado, before upper level ridging brought in much warmer and drier weather to the state for the last few days of the month.

The preliminary average temperature for the Winter of 2021-2022 in Pueblo was 38.8 degrees. This is 0.9 degrees above normal and makes the Winter of 2021-2022 tied with the Winters of 1965-65 and 2019-20 as the 40th warmest on record in Pueblo. This remains well behind the warmest Winter of 1933-34, when the average winter temperature was 39.6 degrees.  Pueblo recorded 1.23 inches of precipitation and 13.7 inches of snow through the Winter of 2021-2022. This is 0.33 inches above normal and 0.5 inches below normal respectively, and makes the Winter of 2021-2022 the 48th wettest and 56th least snowy winter season on record in Pueblo.