2023 was another wild weather year in Colorado and one of wettest on record in Denver
From blizzards to severe thunderstorms and from record cold to record heat, last year was another memorable year of weather in Colorado.
The year started with drought across most of the state. Then relentless late season snow and heavy rain in the spring and summer not only wiped out the drought, it caused Denver to experience one of the wettest years in recent memory.
The Mile High City officially measured 18.94 inches of precipitation including melted snowfall. That was enough to rank 21st of the list of wettest years going back to 1872. It was also the wettest year in Denver since 1999 when 20.96 inches was measured. The average annual precipitation in Denver is just 14.48 inches making the city one of the driest major city's in the country.
The average low temperature in 2023 was slightly above normal but the average high temperature was cool enough to offset the slightly warmer than normal overnights. So the mean temperature for the year was 51 degrees which is 0.2 degrees below normal.
So not only was last year wettest than normal, it was a bit cooler than normal overall.
The summer months were warm but Denver never reached 100 degrees in 2023 which is unusual. The warmest temperature was 99 degrees which happened three times (August 16, August 21, and September 1). Meanwhile the coldest temperature was -11 degrees on February 23 which was cold enough to set a new record low temperature for that date.
There was also 73 degrees with thunderstorms in the Denver metro area last year which is close to normal. 69 days included some type of snowfall including flurries. And living up to the city's reputation, 301 of the 365 days in the 2023 included sunshine. It was not necessarily sunny all day each of the those 301 days, but the sun could be seen at some point during the day.
There was also only 5 days with hail in the metro area which is lower than average.
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