Storm clouds roil in this time-lapse video taken over Baca County in southeastern Colorado, where rain is scarce and where for years a criminal enterprise damaged rain gauges to fool the federal government into thinking drought was even worse than it was. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

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Over the winter of 2016 into the spring of 2017, U.S. weather experts watching southeastern Colorado noticed something they’d never seen before.

Storm clouds would gather over the thirsty sagebrush ranges surrounding tiny Colorado and Kansas towns like Springfield and Coolidge.

On a normal day, the promising storms produced snow or rain that would fall onto a system of official weather stations at airstrips or town halls, into heated “tipping buckets.” When the teeter-totter buckets filled with a thimbleful of water, the seesaw tilted, dropping one miniature metal bucket downward to close an electrical circuit.

One “tick” of the bucket, and a signal went out to National Weather Service sensors around the world that the parched High Plains had recorded one hundredth of an inch of welcome water.

What bewildered the trackers is that on many of these stormy days, those buckets were not tipping. No tipping buckets pointed toward a severe spring drought. All cumulus, no accumulation.

That same winter and spring, weather agency field technicians started phoning in a series of repairs to Colorado and Kansas rain gauges, also unlike anything their Pueblo bosses...

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