What a sigh of relief. It has been a wet start to May in NE Colorado. Lots of folks picked up a quarter of an inch to an inch of rain (and some light snow, too) overnight.
The Denver airport has officially picked up 0.88″ of rain since Sunday evening leaving us with WAY more moisture than we saw in all of April.
This is really awesome news (especially, for my sinuses) because we haven’t seen this much moisture in months. The dust and pollen have finally settled. For now. May is a big transition month for us in and around Denver. Average highs start getting warm, we see our last freezing temperatures until next winter, severe weather begins to ramp up and there’s always a fun surprise.
The forecast over the next 10 days or so looks…rather active. But I’m hesitant about storms coming to fruition since we just came off such a dry April where most of the storms went too far north. Nonetheless, we do have storms to talk about so let’s get into it!
FORECAST
First off, a quick at the 7-day forecast.
The next few days will be cloudy with near-normal temperatures. Rain showers will develop in the mountains this afternoon and continue to increase in coverage through the overnight hours. For the Urban Corridor (mainly north of I-70), the best chances of widespread rain will come from Wednesday morning to the afternoon.
The blue blob is the incoming storm we’re watching. It will move from southern Idaho towards Colorado over the next 24-36 hours. Much like winter storms, we watch for the exact location of the storm over Colorado since it has big implications on what to expect.
Most models are showing this storm moving from southern Colorado towards Kansas and Nebraska. This puts the northern Front Range in a good spot to see some decent upslope. With that said, it’s not a very strong storm and there is limited moisture so we’re not looking at a banger of a storm but any moisture is good for us.
Rain (and higher elevation snow) will taper off by Thursday mid-morning.
Rain totals aren’t expected to be huge but it’ll be enough to may a bit of a dent in our deficit. Best chances for more than a quarter-inch of rain looks to happen from Boulder to Ft. Collins. Wednesday will be a cloudy day with intermittent rain showers. Snow totals will be pretty healthy above 9,000′ for the central and northern mountains.
We begin to clear out Thursday afternoon and will stay clear through Saturday afternoon. The warmest day of the upcoming forecast will be Saturday with highs on the Plains soaring well into the 80s. We’re also watching for breezy conditions Saturday so fire danger may be elevated.
Our *next* storm moves in by the end of the weekend and should bring another round of rain and storms to the region. We’ll save major details on this for later in the week. Models aren’t in great agreement that widespread moisture will occur so it’s best to just expect some changing conditions from Sunday-Monday.
Enjoy the cloudier and wetter (for some) weather we’re expecting!
Andy
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