Upper level High will settle into the 4 Corners region this week, which will keep temps across CO above seasonal norms, and limit thunderstorm activity to isolated coverage, mostly over higher terrain. Still slight chances for an isolated storm across the foothills this week, and any storms that do form will be slow movers with very light upper level winds. This pattern should be in place through the upcoming weekend.
Hurricane Irene has formed in the Caribbean and is forecast to move to the northwest across the Bahamas and along the eastern Florida coast. Model guidance has landfall later this week anywhere from Miami to Cape Hatteras, NC so anyone planning travel to Florida or the southeast US should keep an eye out. Irene is currently a Category 1 hurricane with max sustained winds to 80 mph, but is forecast to intensify into a Category 3 hurricane by later this week with maximum sustained winds to 125 mph. Irene could become a very dangerous hurricane and affect a large portion of the eastern US seaboard, which will cause significant travel disruptions for flights by late this week and weekend as Irene moves along the eastern seaboard.
Unfortunately the next topic to mention is that fire danger will once again be increasing as we move into our second period of heightened fire danger in CO. As the North American Monsoon moisture begins to dissipate in late August and early September, the grasses will also begin to dry out and turn brown as we head into Fall. This period can be a bad period for fire danger until our Fall snows begin. Last year we saw some devastating fries in our northern foothills in September. Hopefully everyone has been keeping grasses low near structures and clearing slash to help mitigate fire danger. We saw almost 4 inches of rain in July, but not quite 2 inches so far in August, and most of that fell in the first week of August, so we are in a similar situation where we were last year at this time, with limited rainfall in the last half of August.
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"Climatology is what you expect, Weather is what you get".
"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong".
Too bad future generations aren't here to see all the great things we are spending their $$ on!!
