wxgeek's weather-Warm and breezy then cool and snowy weekend

A few isolated showers today but mostly over the high mountains and far eastern Plains. Breezy tonight with westerly winds in the 15-30 mph range. Warmer on Thursday with lighter winds and lots of sun. Friday will be warm and windy as an upper level trough approaches from the Pacific Northwest. Southwest winds in the 20-40 mph range are possible Friday, which will cause fire danger to be elevated. The "Green Up" has not reached much above 7500 ft yet, so still lots of very dry fuels on the ground, and the trees remain quite dry.

Big change in the weather will occur Friday evening as a strong cold front associated with an upper level trough will push across CO. Snow will develop in the western mountains during the day on Friday and will develop in the foothills behind the cold front Friday night. Mountain areas will likely have more winter type warnings and advisories issued for Friday and Friday night. Models currently suggest pretty good upslope flow will develop behind the cold front as a surface low develops over northeast NM. Snow and dense fog will develop between 6 pm and midnight Friday and presist into Saturday afternoon. Snow totals hard to tell at this time, but several inches likely between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. This system will bring much colder air with snow level down to Plains level. Light snow or freezing drizzle also likely across the Urban Corridor and Plains on Saturday, but lighter accumulations.

A second short wave trough will drop into CO on Sunday which will keep snow showers and flurries going through the day on Sunday into Sunday night. It currently appears most of this activity will be farther west, although snow showers and flurries still likely along the foothills, with snow level still down to Plains level. Weekend temps will be well below seasonal averages across all of CO and fire danger will be quite low.

Looks like things clear up and warm up early next week with more seasonal type temps and dry conditions. Next chance for any precip looks to be late next week.

As our recent system has moved east, another round of severe weather is taking place across the southern states and Ohio River Valley today with numerous tornado watch areas currently in effect. This will move east into the southeast and mid Atlantic states on Friday.

SEASONAL SNOWFALL UPDATE

With our recent light snow, we have received 18 inches in April, which is well below our average of 42 inches on Conifer Mtn. This brings the seasonal snowfall to 88 inches, which is also well below our average at this time of year of 164 inches. Over the past 20 years, Conifer Mtn has only received less than 100 inches of snow in a season once, and that was the 2005-2006 season with 99 inches. The devastating fire season of 2002 had 102 inches of snow that season, and actually had 17 inches of snow in May that year. The Hayman fire broke out on June 2 that year. My point here is to state the obvious, we are in a very dangerous fire state this year. May and June tend to be our most critical early fire months. July and August are traditionally our wettest months during the North American Monsoon. Currently there is no strong signal as to how wet our monsoon will be this year, so fire season could extend into the summer months if we don't get much monsoonal moisture. So be prepared to evacuate and be diligent with any combustion sources until things improve. We have already lived through the worst March fire season on record in CO with 26 fires across the state, when we are usually buried in snow during March.