wxgeek's weather-more moisture in our future

After a very welcome bout of rain and snow from Ma Nature, looks like more will be on the way later this week and weekend. Tuesday through Thursday will be warmer with temps rebounding back above seasonal norms, and only a slight chance for afternoon and evening showers and thunderstorms along the foothills. Best chances for precipitation will be over the High Country and mostly south of I-70.

A fast moving upper trough with an associated cold front will move through the northern Rockies later this week and drag a cold front across CO Thursday night. On Friday, temps will be cooler and the atmosphere behind the front will usher in some low level moisture which will help fuel showers and thunderstorms over the foothills and adjacent Plains Friday afternoon and evening. Activity may persist overnight Friday into Saturday morning. Snow level comes back into play this weekend, with snow level 9000-10,000 ft Friday afternoon lowering to 7500-8500 ft by Saturday morning. Don't currently expect more than an inch or two in accumulation above 9000 ft, and roads will likely remain just wet like in the last storm. Saggy upper trough will remain over the central Rockies this weekend which will lead to showers and thunderstroms persistsing Saturday and Sunday across most of the state. Snow level should raise to 8000-9000 ft during the day on Saturday and raise further to 9000-10,000 ft on Sunday.

Longer range models keep a chance for showers and thunderstorms going early next week in the afternoon and evening hours as temps slowly raise back to near or above seasonal norms. Precip chances look to diminish by late next week with warmer temps.

In case you were thinking this weather is unusual for May, it really isn't. May is climatologically one of the cloudiest months of the year over the foothills and Plains, and we average 12 inches of snow on Conifer Mountain in May, so pretty typical weather to start the month. The abnormal weather was our warm and dry pattern in March and April. Across the U.S., this past April was the 3rd warmest on record, and the past 6 months are the warmest Nov-Apr period ever across the U.S. since records began in 1895. Basically warm weather records are currently outpacing cold records by a 10:1 ratio in the U.S. I will let the politicians debate all they want about whether Climate Change is real and what has caused it, but from a purely observational standpoint, the earth is getting warmer, has been since the last major ice age with some minor fluctuations. Eventually the earth will cool back down and enter another ice age, but until then, we should understand the impacts of a warmer planet and plan accordingly.

From the Climate Prediction Center, May and June are expected to be warmer than normal across CO with average to below average precipitation. La Nina has officially waned, and we are now in ENSO Nuetral conditions, which are expected to persist through the AUgust to September timeframe. After that, most climate models predict ENSO conditions from Nuetral to a weak El Nino for this Fall. As the Fall and Winter predictions begin to reach concensus, I will advise what the impacts for next winter might be. Currently there are no good predictions available as to how wet our monsoon season will be. I do recall the last time we transitioned from a wek La Nina to a weak El Nino (2006) we had a very wet monsoon season and a very snow winter, but unfortunately no good scientific reasoning behind that.
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"Climatology is what you expect, Weather is what you get".

"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong".