This past weekend was categorized by awesome temps with some storms around. Some of those storms produced large hail and damaging winds but they were largely away from any city areas, which is good. Although, it would’ve been nice to get a little rain around the area.
Denver picked up 0.04″ of rain this weekend but some areas near the Nebraska border saw 1-2″!
The Week Ahead
Although we have a few shortwaves, or small systems that could impact daily weather, that will impact us this week, what you’ll notice are some clouds and windy conditions at times.
Well-timed cool fronts will push through during the overnight on Tuesday and Friday morning. These will largely be lacking moisture so we’re not expected big rain chances this week. You may noticed Tuesday and Thursday will be windy. We could see 20-30 mph gusts those days. Humidity values will drop low enough Thursday for there to be potential fire danger across the Plains.
Friday’s front will move through and drop our temperatures for afternoon highs into the upper 50s to low-60s so it’ll be noticeably cooler on Friday and with this front may come a few showers and thunderstorms but again, there won’t be a ton of moisture to work with.
This weekend looks to be rather nice with highs in the mid to upper-60s.
We *could* have some decent wet weather coming for next week but models do not have a great handle on that just yet so we’ll leave the forecast through this weekend as is.
Drought
Drought isn’t becoming an issue in Denver or along the northern I-25 corridor but drought conditions aren’t far away.
The U.S. Drought Monitor is showing severe drought conditions across Southern Colorado and Eastern Colorado. North-Central Colorado is doing fine in regard to drought but the area of ‘no drought’ is dwindling.
Check out what the drought monitor looked like one month ago.
One month ago, there was only 6.5% of Colorado in a severe drought. Now there is more than 30% of the state under severe drought conditions. We’ll need to start getting some steady moisture across the state to help this out. Monsoon season is coming so we will hopefully see that come to fruition.
What Else?
The snowpack numbers line up pretty good with the drought. The northern portion of the state is still above-normal in regard to snowpack while the southern half of the state is beloew, and in some cases, well below the normal for this time.
Notably, the Upper Rio Grande basin has barely half of the normal snowpack compared to what it typically expected.
The 6-10 day outlook for Precipitation, which is for May 10-14, brings some moisture into Southern Colorado. Good news for them if it happens. Other than that, the next one to two weeks looks rather typical for us here in Colorado.
Talk soon!
~Rain or Shine
I’m Andy Stein
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