A hot Labor Day weekend is just the start of another month of expected above-average temperatures and below-average precipitation in Denver.
Denver’s average temperature in August was 1.3 degrees above normal, according to Denver’s August climate summary from the National Weather Service in Boulder, and the city saw less than an inch of rain with only seven days of measurable rainfall.
Meteorologists at the NWS said a similar pattern is likely to happen in September as well.
“General warmer and drier weather,” NWS Boulder meteorologist David Barjenbruck said of September’s outlook. “That’s typically what we’ve seen over the last few years. We get these drier fall patterns, and they stick around for a while.”
That’s not to say the whole month will be hot and dry.
Labor Day weekend will be hot with highs pushing into the 90s through Sunday, then some cooling expected by Monday. There will be a chance of just a brief storm or two spreading into the lower elevations Sunday and Monday afternoons. #COwx pic.twitter.com/GsbhGPNZ1D
— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) September 1, 2023
The first full week of September will see a drop in temperatures after Labor Day weekend’s near-record highs, even getting to a near-seasonal norm Tuesday with a high of 82 degrees. A few scattered storms coming off the mountains are also possible on Sunday and Monday.
That won’t last long though, Barjenbruck said, as the second week of September will warm back up above normal.
“The 8-to-14-day outlook shows above-normal temperatures (are) pretty certain,” Barjenbruck said.
Inversely, the 8-to-14-day outlook for precipitation shows below-normal levels into the second week of September.
Past the 14-day mark, Barjenbruck said, it gets a little more difficult to predict patterns with the same amount of confidence, but temperature and precipitation levels are generally expected to stay the same throughout the month.
Noting that the 10-year anniversary of the historic 2013 floods in Boulder County is this month, Barjenbruck said a wetter weather pattern in September isn’t out of the question later this month; it just isn’t likely.
“There are occurrences when we do get into wet weather patterns,” he said. “They can be in September, but this year’s looks like we’re going to be fairly dry, at least through the first half (of the month). We’ll see where it goes from there.”
