Influences from the large upper trough that brought the severe weather outbreak across the Plains states and cooler weather in CO will begin to fade today as an upper ridge aloft begins to build across CO. This will mean warmer temps with isolated afternoon and evening showers and thunderstorms will presist into the Memorial Day weekend. Temps should rebound to near normal seasonal values by Thursday and continue to gradually warm through the coming weekend. Limited moisture, but isolated afternoon and evening showers will be possible, especially over the foothills and High Country today and Wednesday. Shower chances increase across the eatern plains Thursday and Friday, but no severe weather is expected across CO. Any significant precip does not look likely into early next week, so should be a nice weekend to enjoy the great outdoors.
Severe weather still a threat across the southern Plains today (OK and TX)and will move into AR, MO and LA tonight. My thoughts go out to the victims and families affected by yesterday's tornado in Oklahoma. Difficult day for the community. I know many people that live in that area, and fortunately everyone is ok. The people in that area are probably the most educated population in the world on severe weather, with OU, the Storm Prediction Center and National Weather Center all located in Norman. NWS did a great job in providing 16 minutes lead warning time on this tornado, but with nowhere to hide for many, devastation was unfortunately inevitable. Moore has had 3 major (F5 in 1999, EF3 in 2003 and EF4 yesterday) tornadoes over the past 14 years, more than any community should have to deal with.
Since it appears our snow season is over, except for a fluke few inches more, here is where we ended up. Conifer Mountain received 177 inches, which is slightly above (102%) the average of 173 inches. We had a miraculous Spring with 90.5 inches falling in the March-May time frame. This also helped to create very low fire danger during this period. State snowpack is in decent shape except for the southwest portion of the state where the snowpack is less than 50% or normal. Drought conditions have eased along the Front Range, but still persist across southeast CO. With June approaching, this tends to be when CO receives most of our severe weather, and when fires are most prevalent and dangerous. The Climate Prediction Center is currently predicting a dry and warm June across 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!!
