mayjawintastawm

It wakes up when we have something to talk about (drought and heat doesn't inspire much), but yeah, we could use a few more posters. And right, it's always better to be out enjoying it than inside kvetching about it online...

yeah, we're quite dry over the past month too, probably more like 0.5". Nonsoon weather for sure. Hope it materializes late. Where the heck is the moisture source for the KS/NE rains? It all seems to be coming from the NW- could that much Pacific moisture make it that far?

Interesting- no LSRs at all yesterday from NWS BOU, and no tornado reports to SPC. And I don't know about up in Estes Park, but it certainly wasn't cold at the surface or above in the Denver Metro area.

It was fun to hear the comparisons of the human-made and natural fireworks on 7/4. Pop, pop, pop bang pop pop... BOOOOOOMMMM. We got about an inch of rain on the day we had a 10% chance of precip, and nothing on the day we had a 70% chance. Ah, probabilities.

Also I have the luxury of parking in two places at work, one in a garage but more time consuming to get in and out, and another closer to the door but outside. If the SPC has us in a slight risk or greater, it's inside for me. That's worked pretty well for the past 5 years. At home, it's inside. 6 years ago we had 2+" hail in a surprise late Sept storm and our one outside car was, shall we say, made more aerodynamic by the weather, with $6500 damage to the house.

Welcome! 1. In my (fortunate and unfortunate) experience, you start to worry about dents when hailstones get to 1.5" or greater. and broken windows over 2". 2. Snow fell when temps were right around 32" so it probably insulated the plants somewhat. That's good, and often happens with late Spring snowstorms- a hard freeze without snow is much more damaging. 3. El Nino and some other stuff- raindancewx and Chinook have the good info on that.

So- this is really cool. Since early AM it struck me that it was more humid than normal (and definitely more than predicted). Dewpoints have been in the upper 50s all along the Front Range as far south as northern CO Springs, pretty unusual. Then when the clouds broke a couple hours ago, you could see the shear- clouds close to the ground are continuing to move from NE to SW, and higher clouds are moving W to E more or less. The temp has gone up 10 degrees in the last hour and a half, with dewpoints holding steady. And they just issued a tornado watch for the foothills on north and east, as far south as CO Springs. Naked eye observations FTW. We'll see what initiates.

Highest amount recorded was north of Kremmling at a mountain SNOTEL location with 13.3 inches. Many higher passes from I-70 north got 1-2 inches. It's unusual but not super-rare. This late spring/summer however (so far) is the coldest and wettest in our now 10 summers here. But it's supposed to be 90 by Thursday.

That got going pretty quick, in a pretty cool environment too. The north side of the Palmer Divide always seems like the hail capital of the world. Fortunately we live about 20 miles north of Castle Rock, so we miss the biggest ones.

Flying into DEN last night about 10 PM from the east, passed about 50 miles south of a cluster of severe thunderstorms over western KS that is still wreaking havoc this afternoon 400-500 miles further east. The lightning was not just continuous, but when I could count I saw between 5 and 10 strikes per second. Should have gotten a video- duh.

Craziest thing is that it's June, the water temp must be in the 50s, and Oakland Airport is in the middle of the freaking bay. I imagine that 100 feet above the surface it must have been 105+ degrees to create a surface temp that high on the ground!

I know, the storms last evening were quite high-based so the lightning display overachieved for the amount of rain! The flashes lit things up 20-30 miles away from the actual storms.

I just got back from a trip to the East Coast Sat-Tues. The Saturday severe thunderstorm absolutely nailed us with accumulating 1" hail. We lost 1/3 of the leaves on our trees and I picked up 4 big bags of pine needles this morning. Fortunately we have a steel roof and hail-resistant skylights, the cars were under cover, and we had procrastinated about planting the tomatoes. We did get rain the next two days too. Our yard is the muddiest it's been in June since we moved here in 2010. No need for watering for a while!

Yup, DEN looks like it will be a couple tenths either side of 51.6 for May, which would be about 5.5 degrees below normal, 7th coldest all time and coldest since 1995. Wet too, but not in the top 20. Funny also that the coldest temp this month was 30, so not that bad for plants, just consistently cool. Cool high temps are probably the biggest story. We only got into the 80s a couple times.

Yeah we got 4.5" or a bit more at 5650 feet in south metro Denver. Latest I've seen measurable snow in 50+ years, spent mostly in New England (I have seen snow squalls in July in CO and New Hampshire, but that was on hikes). I was in southwestern Ohio 3 weeks ago and they hadn't been able to plow yet because it was just too muddy.

That's what I tell people not from here... if you want gloomy weather, come the first half of May. That's about the best and only chance you'll find 3 days in a row without sun. Midwesterners may feel at home, southern Californians are ready to jump out a window. Me, I just enjoy the moisture.

Wow. Send some of that up here. 88 F today after 80 predicted. Getting real dry again. About 0.75" rain in the past month and a bit over an inch the month before that. I think that qualifies as a nonsoon. My water bill is stupid.

I was in MA, in kindergarten at the time. Our teachers had pinhole projectors for it, and I do remember being underwhelmed, though a little apprehensive/scared before it happened. Then it was kind of like "When's the eclipse coming?" "It's over." "what???"

Will be in Hastings, NE, hopefully in between shortwaves. Anyone from here targeting NE? The whole dang Denver metro area is COMPLETELY out of eclipse glasses and the ones I ordered from Amazon last week never came. Maybe some places along our trip route might have some, but feeling a bit out of luck there at this time. Everyplace I've tried has just sold out when I get there. Wish I could make some- a longtime ago I used to use 35mm film...

Booked perhaps the only room under $500 left within a couple hours of totality in central Nebraska... lucky that we'll be taking a family trip to Chicago at the time anyway, and a relatively small detour. There is NEVER traffic around where we're staying, but I expect there will be considerable traffic anyway. We'll have about 80 miles to drive the morning of, to get to a good place (targeting Hastings., will stay away from I-80 till it's done). Think I'll go find the Nebraska DeLorme atlas or something in case back roads are needed. Have not tornado chased, but I imagine it will be a similar kind of thing (though the only danger will be from the other cars!!) Looked like Omaha still had a few reasonable rooms left a couple days ago. More traffic issues there for sure.

Thinking the farther north and west you are, the less likely to encounter clouds and/or haze to decrease the drama. We'll be taking my daughter to college in OH and driving either from or to CO, so either I-80 in NE or I-70 in MO (totality covers its ENTIRE LENGTH in MO) are a good bet. It'll be around 1 PM CT... are PM thunderstorms a good bet in MO? NE tends to dry out a lot in August.

Welcome! I would like some fog, please. Getting drier and hotter each day. Any thoughts on the start of the SW monsoon? Last year it was a bit of a "nonsoon". Us in the big squarish states could use some more moisture, soon.

That one would be a gutter ball. I don't think I've seen one at quite that low a latitude. Need some bumpers on the lanes. Why does it look to me like the ridge wants to build right back on top of it?

I think my blood pressure just went down 15 points when I saw that picture. Incredible. I want to go have lunch on that rock.