Cool and moist air filtered into northeast CO behind a cold front Tuesday evening with a little more strength than anticipated. Even a little drizzle along the Urban Corridor this morning with cool northeast winds. It definitely made for a cooler and wetter than expected bike ride into work. Certainly welcome relief to many, especially fire fighters. The summer solstice arrives at 5:09 pm MDT today, so enjoy the most daylight of the year today.
Unfortunately our little cool spell will not be long lived. Upper ridge will begin building back over CO on Thursday with temps rebounding to near or slightly above seasonal norms. Looks like a southeast winds will develop across the Plains and into the foothills up to about 8000 ft on Thursday, with wind speeds of 10-20 mph. West to southwest winds will exist above 8000 ft and over most of western CO. Still higher RH values for the Plains and lower foothills on Thursday, so fire danger not as high as it has been. As the upper ridge continues to build into the central Plains and southern Rockies, temps will increase Friday through Sunday, with temps 10-20 degrees above seasonal norms once again, and this will combine with very low RH values and gusty southwest to west winds which may prompt red flag warnings to be issued Friday through Sunday.
As for moisture, a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms exists today for south central and southeast CO, with a very slight chance of showers extending north into South park and southern Jeffco and Teller County. Thursday and Friday look dry across the entire state with only a slight chance for very isolated showers. A slightly better chance for afternoon/evening showers and thunderstorms will exists Saturday and Sunday as upper flow aloft will be southerly and may import some additional moisture, but best chances will be west of the Divide, although isolated cells over the foothills will be possible. Unfortunately any precip will likely be on the light side, so our dry June looks like it will continue through the end of the month. I have recorded about 0.75 inches of precip in June on Conifer Mtn, where our average for June is about 2.0 inches. For most of next week, temps will remain quite warm with only isolated afternoon and evening showers and thunderstorms.
So it's now time to begin looking toward the North American Monsoon. There has not been extensive research on ENSO patterns and the intensity of the North American Monsoon, but some recent empirical data suggests that when we are transitioning from a La Nina pattern to a Neutral or El Nino pattern, the monsoon season tends to be wetter than average. We can only hope that this will be the case this year. If we do not have an early onset, or even a wet monsoon season, it will be a very long and difficult summer fire season. Latest long range models now suggest that the upper ridge will build into the NM/AZ area in early July, which would delay the onset of the monsoon in CO. Hopefully the pattern will change and allow for an early onset.
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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!!
