Our mild and dry weather pattern will continue into this coming weekend, with temps slightly above seasonal norms and no precip through Saturday. There will be a chance for afternoon showers west of the Divide on Sunday, sunny and mild east of the Divide. Another great weekend to get out and see the Fall colors.
Next week, a weak upper level trough will slowly move east across CO early in the week, which will increase precip chances for most of the state. Best chances for the foothills and Urban Corridor look to be next Tuesday and Wednesday, although a chance for showers and isolated thunderstorms will exist each day Monday through Friday. An upper ridge then builds back up over the western US which will create a drier and warmer pattern by next weekend. Snow level next week looks to remain above 12,000 ft, so no snow currently in sight through early October for our foothills. We had a thunderstorm on Conifer Mountain on Monday that left a good half inch or more of hail and sleet that looked like it had snowed, but officially did not count since it was thunderstorm related.
Smoke from large fires in WA, OR and ID will continue to drift across CO under northwest flow aloft through about Saturday, then we should see some improvement from Sunday into next week as wind direction changes.
The North American Monsoon officially came to an end on Sep 16 this year, so it started early (June 25) and ended late, and produced above normal precip across most of AZ this summer. It provided good rainfall in CO in July, which greatly helped ease our fire danger across the state, but produced below average precip in August for most of 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".
Too bad future generations aren't here to see all the great things we are spending their $$ on!!
