Denver weather: July is here and it’s usually our hottest month of the year – The Denver Post

July is the hottest month on average in Denver and along the Front Range with an average temperature of just over 75 degrees. Highs normally are in the upper 80s if not the 90s for most of the month meaning that 90-degree and even 100-degree days are not uncommon. July is also the month where monsoon moisture begins to set in but that has not been extremely reliable the last few years.

Kicking off the month, the average high temperature to start the month sits at 88-degrees. By the end of the month, that temperature rises to 90-degrees meaning that 90-degree days are aplenty during the month. The most number of 90-degree days Denver has seen throughout the month of July was 27 days back in 2012. Coincidentally, the most number of 100-degree days we’ve felt in July was seven days also in 2012. We also felt seven days of 100-degree heat back in July of 2005. Since records began in Denver back in 1872, there have only been 33 years where Denver has hit 100-degrees at some point during the month of July. Nearly half of those have come since 2000.

July is Denver’s warmest month of the year with an average temperature of 75.1-degrees. Back in 2012, the average temperature was 78.9-degrees and was marked as Denver’s warmest month ever recorded. Some of the warmest months on record line up with some of the driest months on record. Denver averages 2.14 inches of rain throughout the month but there have been multiple years where Denver has picked up less than a quarter of an inch of rain for the entire month. In 1901, Denver picked up only 0.01 of an inch of precipitation. The inverse of this came in 1965 when Denver picked up 6.41 inches of rain making it Denver’s wettest month ever.

The North American Monsoon season usually runs from mid-June to September depending on weather patterns in place that year. The North American Monsoon (NAM) is simply just a seasonal shift of the winds. This wind shift brings in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Pacific Ocean and transports it into the southern and central Rocky Mountains and produces semi-daily strong afternoon thunderstorms. The NAM is responsible for bringing Colorado a good chunk of its expected precipitation during the peak summer months.

Cold July’s don’t really happen that often anymore. The last and only time in the last two decades that Denver has had a July make it into a top 20 spot for coldest months was back in 2009. Compare that to the 13 times that Denver has risen into a top 20 warmest July on record since 2000. Heat is becoming more pronounced in July in Colorado thanks to a warming climate. Since 1970, the summer season in Denver has warmed by 2.3-degrees, according to CimateCentral.

The Climate Prediction Center is calling for July to be warmer than average but we should see normal precipitation throughout the month hopefully keeping drought concerns from creeping back in.

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