Estes Park has warmed about 5.8°F between 1979 and 2024.
About 1.3°F per decade, measured from Estes Park's official daily weather records, 1979–2024. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.
Is that a lot? Estes Park's climate has warmed faster than most other cities in United States.
What has actually changed
Each card compares the 1970s (the first ten years of the
record) with recent years (the last ten) — the same span
the headline and the chart use.
Freezing nights
41 fewer nights
1970s
278 / yr
→
Recent
237 / yr
Milder winters — fewer frosts
Average temperature
+4.8°F
1970s
31.3°F
→
Recent
36.1°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
about the same
1970s
0 / yr
→
Recent
0 / yr
About the same number of heat days
Rainy days
12 more days
1970s
131 / yr
→
Recent
143 / yr
Wetter on average
Estes Park's temperature, year by year
Average temperature for each year from 1979 to 2024.
a warmer-than-average year a cooler-than-average year
Each bar is one year. Most recent years sit above the older ones.
Some recent years still came in cool — warming is a slope,
not a straight climb.
In day-to-day terms, that long-term shift shows up as about 16 fewer freezing nights a year compared with the 1970s.
When in the year the change shows up
How much warmer each month is now than in the 1970s.
Useful if you garden or care about a particular season —
otherwise the headline above already has the answer.
August has warmed the most — about 12.0°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.
Methodology & sources
Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 30 years of daily observations at Columbine, a weather station, about 91 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.