How cold and how dry your town gets

1-3.1 What does NOAA say about each station?

These are NOAA's 1991-2020 normals, with the January low from the monthly set. Checked November 2026. Each row is a weather station, not a town. Your house may be warmer or colder than the nearest one.

Cedaredge 3E sits about 3 miles east of town and may be higher than the town itself. Delta 3E has no precipitation or snow normal in this dataset, so don't borrow one from a neighbor. Delta's January low is colder than Cedaredge's higher station. That's what the data shows, and this manual has no sourced explanation for it.

For a longer view, Walker Field's record from 1900 to 2016 averages a 15.9°F January minimum and 8.67 inches of precipitation a year.

1-3.2 Reading the columns

January low is an average of nightly lows across the month and across 30 years. An average means some nights go well below it. Plan for colder than the figure shows.

Heating degree days add up how far each day's mean falls below a set base temperature over a year. A bigger number means more heat burned. Cedaredge 3E's 6,428 against Walker Field's 5,497 means more heating demand, though the bill also depends on the house and the fuel, §8-4.

Cooling degree days do the same for hot days. Walker Field's 1,233 is more than twice Cedaredge 3E's 557. The Energy Department says evaporative coolers work well where air is hot and humidity low, and swamp coolers are covered in §9-1. Humidity numbers for these towns aren't in the sources behind this manual.

Precipitation is rain and melted snow together. Every station with a figure gets under 15 inches, which is part of why irrigation, ditches and hauled water matter here.

1-3.3 When does the first freeze come?

The Colorado Climate Center's 2024 summary says Palisade averages its first fall freeze on October 26, the latest in the state. Other Grand Junction stations come in late October. One year in ten, the Grand Valley freezes by mid-October, and Palisade's earliest since 1991 was October 4, 2016.

Those are the warm, low end of the Slope. Higher ground usually freezes first, so don't wait for the Palisade date if you live up on a mesa. Do the check in §7-1 well before the average. Treat any date as a guess, not a promise.

1-3.4 What's a snow load, and what's yours?

Ground snow load is the design figure, in pounds per square foot, that a county uses for what roofs must carry. It's a building number, not a forecast. Mesa County publishes its figures, and they're non-reducible.

The Glade Park Store and a 2-mile radius are 30, and for the rest of Glade Park, the county says to contact the department. These figures matter when you add a shed, a patio cover or a roof-mounted unit, §10-1. They apply in Mesa County only. We couldn't open the Delta County or Montrose County building pages when this was last checked, so ask those offices directly.

1-3.5 How deep is the frost line here?

This manual can't give you a number. No frost depth could be confirmed for Mesa, Delta or Montrose counties in November 2026. Mesa's codes page lists none, and the foundation standard it links to couldn't be found. Its subdivision foundation list, dated July 29, 2022, calls itself a working document and says requirements vary by subdivision.

Before you bury a water line or set a footing, ask your county's building office for the frost depth at your address. Don't take it from a neighbor or a web page, this one included. §10-1 has the offices.