Mountain West Discussion

[Chinook]

I am pleased to announce that we will have a new thread for the summer. Today, it was 80 degrees here. The snow from several days ago is long gone. We probably will have above normal temperatures for several days. I hope we will have a summer with normal to above-normal rainfall. 

[raindancewx]

Tentative idea from me is a cool-ish start to Summer, before the heat turns on later, relative to time of year. Not expecting a particularly robust Monsoon, but just starting to look at Summer now. If we go into a La Nina in winter, there is often a huge September for moisture if we are to have a hot/dry winter. Think 2005, 2008, 2013, 2017 which were all pretty dry and cold neutral to La Nina setups.

[Chinook]

We have had a couple of sub-severe storms out east of me today. The last 12 days have been above 60 here, with a high of 78, yesterday, a high of 81 on 4/27 and roughly 80 degrees today. 

Edit: the cold front has come in. In combination with some rain showers, the cold front has increased the dew point to 48 degrees. Summertime!

Edit: my place has had some rain showers and distant thunder today.

[Chinook]

Just a few minutes ago, I saw the first nearby lightning bolts I've seen all year, with low rumbles of thunder. Several severe storm warnings were issued for NE Colorado this evening.

Edit: 

my place had another thunderstorm at 11:00PM (previous was at about 10:00PM) with light to moderate rain, better thunder, and at several distinctive lightning bolts!!  My rain totals are 0.30" and 0.26" for the last 2 days.

[smokeybandit]

This is my first spring in Colorado.  The thunder just seems so much more intense here than on the east coast, even if the storm itself is minor.  Last two nights we've had house shaker thunder claps.  You get those once per year back east.

[mayjawintastawm]

4 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

This is my first spring in Colorado.  The thunder just seems so much more intense here than on the east coast, even if the storm itself is minor.  Last two nights we've had house shaker thunder claps.  You get those once per year back east.

You get those nightly here between Memorial Day and late June. I don't know exactly why it is so much louder, maybe drier or less dense air transmits the sound better. One of my dogs absolutely hates it.

We've been quite dry through all this- only 0.02" of rain in almost 2 weeks during what is one of the wetter parts of the year climatologically.

[snowfan789]

Yeah, we are in a very dry spell through much of CO, at a typically relatively wet and in some cases white time, no less. If this lasts, that will become an increasingly major problem. Parts of the State have had good to great snow years but a lot of the State is already in varying degrees of drought. We need moisture to return soon.

[Chinook]

We've had a max wind gust to 47mph here at Fort Collins- Loveland. We seem to be in a cool, dry, and sunny air mass, with low temperatures that could get down to 33 here.

[Chinook]

This isn't really Mountain West weather, but this is my first side-by-side comparison of Radarscope vs. GRLevel3. I decided to buy Radarscope. It has several nice features.

There are definitely a few things that are different, but Radarscope has the super-resolution (Level-2) reflectivity. It has super-resolution (Level-2) base velocity, but I don't see storm relative velocity. So I guess I will still have to use GRLevel3's storm-relative velocity for some purposes, which is nearly at super-resolution.

They have the same features for composite reflectivity. They have pretty similar features on the dual-polarization fields. GRLevel3 has better resolution on 1-hour rainfall and VIL.

Radarscope has a distance measurement feature that makes a circle, showing miles. GRLevel3 has markers for measurement, and you get nautical miles. It's kind of funny that sometimes the maps show different small towns, but that's just the difference in the built-in maps from some national database.

Storm tracks are a little different for some reason. Generally, I don't like the storm tracks, so I turn those off when I use GRLevel3. I pretty much just use hail icons in GRLevel3. Nice green hail icons make you think that every storm is throwing out 1"-2" hailstones 100% of the time. That's fun!

GRLevel3 is more customizeable in terms of which types of warnings to show, which types of storm information to show (hail, meso, TVS), storm reports, and ability to load specialized color schemes.  Radarscope has built-in support for MPING (cell-phone app where observers report any precipitation type, or possibly severe weather). I haven't found any severe storm report button (NWS).

[Chinook]

This is the 2nd snowstorm in the US, in 2 days

[Chinook]

My area had a high of 61 and a low of 39 on  Sunday. Yesterday, we had morning rain and evening rain. We had a high of 46 and a low of 35, which was quite below normal for this time of year. Today, it feels so much warmer, because it is partly sunny. We have a light wind but yet only 57 degrees, with a low of 39 this morning. Going back and looking at the MesoWest web site, my immediate area had a low of 37 on 5/8, a low of 37 on 5/6, and low of 35 on 5/5.  Fort Collins temperature is at about average for the month.

Models and forecasts generally show some showers and thunderstorms for our area on Thursday and Friday.

Seasonal snowfall maps for Midwest/West. The Ohio Valley averaged 50% of average snow.

Southern Colorado has now been put in to areas of D2-D3 drought, but no drought for northern Colorado, except an area of D0-D1 drought closer to Goodland, Kansas.

 

 

[raindancewx]

I said I would do this at the end of the season - so here is my analog blend using sampled cities across the US. I was way too snowy in the NE. Otherwise, results weren't amazing, but I wouldn't call them awful either. Most sites had at least one analog that was pretty close to the final snow total, and the weighted analog blend got quite a few cities within six inches (marked in pink). Some are obviously in the South, but fair number in the West/Midwest too where they actually got substantial snow.

The forecast and % averages were my forecast compared to 60-year snow averages. The 2019 in red is total snow July-mid-May. If you look at the light purple (either closest analog or within an inch of the total) you find that 2018-19 and 1953-54 were closest to 2019-20 most frequently. Locally, the blend had 9.0" for Albuquerque at the airport - they got 6.6". I had 10.5" at my place. The weighting below was 1953-54 (x2), 1983-84 (x2), 1992-93, 1995-96, 2009-10 (x3), 2018-19. I'm generally happy with 1953-54, 1992-93, 2018-19 as analogs for the winter, they more or less worked in Fall, Winter and Spring with the right weights - but the others screwed it all up.

[Chinook]

A storm is getting going near Parker / C470 area. Maybe Mayjawintastawm can see that.

[mayjawintastawm]

Inside and not at home, but will see how the yard looks later.

EDIT: Dry. Less than 0.1" of rain since 4/23.

EDIT 2: Finally broke the streak about 8:20 with just under 0.2" rain and a little hail to 0.6". Nice.

[Chinook]

This severe-warned storm is just about to go over I-25.  My place just got rain for 10 minutes.

[Chinook]

We will have a narrow area of 80-95 degrees on the high plains on Tuesday, while the Mississippi Valley is cool.

[Chinook]

Yesterday, we had wind gusts of 30mph , up to 50mph at Denver, from the southeast. Today, Fort Collins has a dew point of 54, and SPC mesoanalysis shows 2000 J/kg of CAPE, although probably no rain will happen. The CAPE should shift up to Wyoming for the severe weather risk later.

Edit:

We've been drylined. The moisture is shifting to Wyoming.

[mayjawintastawm]

Actually felt good this AM with DPs in the low 50s. Now it's back to windy and nose-desiccating.

[Chinook]

I drove down the road to get a clear shot of this storm east of Fort Collins.

 

[mayjawintastawm]

Most places in the Front Range area getting around an inch of rain this afternoon and early evening, so welcome! Lots of places getting snow above 8000 feet, and accumulating in the mountain towns. I don't think I've seen snow falling outside of the high mountains on or after Memorial Day weekend since we moved here 10 years ago.

[raindancewx]

We've really cooled off a lot here since the late April - early May heat wave. After lows near 60 and highs near 90 we've dropped back to highs near 80 and lows near 50 - which is actually a bit cool for late May. We dropped into the 40s the other day with dew points in the negative single digits. We had a lot of days in Summer 2016 with dew points around 10 and highs around 100 in late June and July. The dew point depressions were almost painful but you had populated areas dropping into the 40s from the mid-high 90s - very impressive. I think we had a day where we went from 100 to 58 in Albuquerque, when something like 100 to 69 would be more typical.

There are some indications of a wetter monsoon than last year. It does seem to happen more frequently with lower snow pack totals heading into Spring. I use Taos Powderhorn as an approximation - still snow covered into late June last year. Not gonna happen this year. It seems like the monsoon really kicks off 2-3 weeks after the mountains above 10,000 feet can absorb the full heat of the sun without snow-pack interfering. Also hoping for a big August for rainfall, it has been ages since the city has had a real wet August.

[Chinook]

4 hours ago, mayjawintastawm said:

Most places in the Front Range area getting around an inch of rain this afternoon and early evening, so welcome! Lots of places getting snow above 8000 feet, and accumulating in the mountain towns. I don't think I've seen snow falling outside of the high mountains on or after Memorial Day weekend since we moved here 10 years ago.

My place may have gotten 0.8" or better. It was fairly cool, with no thunder and lightning. It's a pretty nice to have a day of gentle rain. It helps the plants and crops to have the water sink into the soil. There is not a quick water runoff and the soil is cool. The water doesn't immediately evaporate.

[smokeybandit]

I got 1.1"

A wonderful soaking rain, never really that heavy

[mayjawintastawm]

Storms holding together as they come off the foothills this PM, with a bit of a Denver cyclone and DPs in the mid 40s. One SW of Castle Rock looks like it's starting to rotate. Anybody down there seeing anything off to the west? Could be some surprise hail down by Larkspur/Monument shortly. Tis the season!

 

EDIT: Fizzling 20 minutes later.But one NE of there was briefly severe warned for hail.

[Chinook]

The storm near you was fairly short-lived. Maybe you got to see a nice anvil or some lightning in the cloud. 

Today, it's 110 in Phoenix, as an upper-level low offshore from CA helps boost the ridge over the Southwest. That upper low will move towards Oregon, and there should be some chances for severe weather near and east of the Cascades. This is a very unusual situation.

We have had some pleasant days. My area had some brief lightning and rain on Wednesday evening.

edit:

tonight there were a few lightning flashes out to my east

a supercell near Cheyenne transitioned to this horseshoe-shaped storm

[Chinook]

Space-X and NASA have had a successful launch. It is the first time astronauts have launched from Cape Canaveral since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

[Chinook]

My place has a new storm that developed very close to town. There are lightning bolts all over the place, like this

 

 

 

[smokeybandit]

Constant lightning strikes in that cell.  Made for a fun evening of storm watching, though I wish the storms made it further north like the morning's meso runs suggested.

[Chinook]

Some pictures from May 29th (1st picture) and today.  I got pictures of a storm, which had the most rain over Horsetooth Mountain (shown in picture) and also Fort Collins

 

 

 

[Chinook]

I think this is my first severe storm watch of the year

Quote

  The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a

   * Severe Thunderstorm Watch for portions of 
     Central and eastern Colorado

   * Effective this Saturday afternoon and evening from 1215 PM
     until 800 PM MDT.

   * Primary threats include...
     Scattered damaging winds and isolated significant gusts to 80
       mph likely
     Isolated large hail events to 1.5 inches in diameter possible