wxgeek's weather-Wild Weather Day/Night, More for Today

Well, certainly a wild weather day and night yesterday. Numerous tornadoes reported down near Parker and one near DIA, up to 2 inch hail reported, and up to 8 inches of hail accumulated in Highlands Ranch with snow plows being called out to clear roads. Lots of trees stripped of leaves. We nearly missed out on all the action before a large cell formed around 10:30 pm last night between Bailey and Evergreen and provided quite the lightning show with some small hail.

So, round 2 on tap for today/tonight. Morning sounding from Denver had a Lifted Index of -4.7 which portrays a very unstable airmass today with abundant low level moisture, surface dew points in the upper 50's to low 60's across teh Plains and Front Range, and steep lapse rates. This all tranlates into the possiblity of more severe thunderstorms this afternoon, evening and night for areas from the foothills east, and mostly north of the Palmer Divide. Storms likely to form over northeast CO initially, and then develop farther south with the strongest storms again east of I-25 and north of the Palmer Divide, but some storms could again back build into the foothills. Some tornadoes are also a possibility.

So, once again, be alert and aware of developing storms and stay tuned to NOAA weather radio or local radio/TV for any warnings, which could include tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and flooding.

Weather should calm down a bit Friday through Sunday, although Saturday looks to have critical fire weather conditions with strong south to southwest winds, very warm temps, and very low RH values. recent rain has helped increase ground fuel moisture, so hopefully that offsets the weather conditions. Cold front will move through Saturday night which will cool temps on Sunday and winds will be much lighter.

Mostly warm and dry conditions look in store for most of next week across most of CO. That said, as we saw yesterday, it only takes a weak boundary and some low level moisture to kick off severe weather this time of year in CO.
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"Climatology is what you expect, Weather is what you get".

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

The key to being a good weather communicator is not to lapse in the gobblygook like "lapse rates" "lifted indexes" and "RH values." While I'm impressed you know all that stuff, you lose your audience when you throw out terms most of us don't understand.

Just a suggestion from the peanut gallery.

Raees wrote: The key to being a good weather communicator is not to lapse in the gobblygook like "lapse rates" "lifted indexes" and "RH values." While I'm impressed you know all that stuff, you lose your audience when you throw out terms most of us don't understand.

Just a suggestion from the peanut gallery.

Great suggestion....although I just post it, I don't actually write it. I don't understand all of it, but he usually puts it in plain enough language for me, and the other words are confusing. Although I have had a few comments from people really interested in weather who understand the terminology and are glad he put it in there!

Oh, never mind then. I thought you were writing that.