Mountain West Discussion

[yoda]

This is pretty cool being the end of June

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Missoula MT
222 PM MDT Sun Jun 28 2020

IDZ009-010-MTZ006-007-291800-
/O.NEW.KMSO.WW.Y.0046.200629T0600Z-200629T1800Z/
Western Lemhi County-Eastern Lemhi County-
Bitterroot/Sapphire Mountains-Butte/Blackfoot Region-
222 PM MDT Sun Jun 28 2020

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO
NOON MDT MONDAY ABOVE 6500 FEET...

* WHAT...Snow expected above 6500 feet. Total snow accumulations
  of up to two inches. Locally higher amounts possible with 6
  inches of snow possible above 7500 feet.

* WHERE...Bannock Pass, Highway 28 Tendoy to Lone Pine, Lemhi
  Pass, Highway 93 Sula to Lost Trail Pass, and Georgetown Lake.

* WHEN...From midnight tonight to noon MDT Monday.

* IMPACTS...Travel could be affected.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Slow down and use caution while traveling.

The latest road conditions for the state you are calling from can
be obtained by calling 5 1 1.

[raindancewx]

Mid-80s today in late afternoon in late June in Albuquerque. I'll take it! CFS continues to insist on a broadly cold West / hot East pattern for July.

[Chinook]

6 hours ago, raindancewx said:

Mid-80s today in late afternoon in late June in Albuquerque. I'll take it! CFS continues to insist on a broadly cold West / hot East pattern for July.

 

For eastern Colorado, the trend over the next week should be upwards-- possibly peaking at about 100 degrees on July 8th, but that is 9 days away.

[raindancewx]

My guess is enough moisture will come up from the south to slow down the warm up on a couple of days, at least for parts of Eastern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The models favored strong monsoon activity over the mountains of old Mexico in July, so any mechanism that can bring the moisture up efficiently should bring relief to particularly hot highs, even if it is just via cloudiness.

The GFS is pretty wet for eastern Colorado in particular over the next five days.

[mayjawintastawm]

9 hours ago, raindancewx said:

My guess is enough moisture will come up from the south to slow down the warm up on a couple of days, at least for parts of Eastern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The models favored strong monsoon activity over the mountains of old Mexico in July, so any mechanism that can bring the moisture up efficiently should bring relief to particularly hot highs, even if it is just via cloudiness.

The GFS is pretty wet for eastern Colorado in particular over the next five days.

Would love to see that but I'm very skeptical. Dry has been generally winning out- anytime moisture threatens to increase it gets squashed.

[Chinook]

My area had a couple of periods of rain, mostly associated the upper-level lift, and not much associated with higher CAPE. We had stratiform rain yesterday morning. Then, we had a very nice blue skies with a high temp of about 80 degrees and breeze to 15mph, with some cumulus clouds later. Then, at 11:30PM, we had this

 

 

[Chinook]

On 6/30/2020 at 11:52 PM, raindancewx said:

My guess is enough moisture will come up from the south to slow down the warm up on a couple of days, at least for parts of Eastern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The models favored strong monsoon activity over the mountains of old Mexico in July, so any mechanism that can bring the moisture up efficiently should bring relief to particularly hot highs, even if it is just via cloudiness.

The GFS is pretty wet for eastern Colorado in particular over the next five days.

 

Eastern Colorado should have some showers and thunderstorms today and tomorrow, and I would suppose this will help keep temps below 95 for quite a few areas. I guess it is questionable if very much rainfall really hits the I-25 cities.

Fort Collins had +2.8F for June and my place in Loveland got 2.15" of rainfall.  The 1981-2010 average for Fort Collins is 2.17", so precipitation was normal compared to that climatological average. That's so close to normal, that it's very strange. It has been a very long time since I really had a normal-precipitation summer month with precipitation spread out nicely into different weeks.

2019-2020 snow statistics:

Fort Collins-CSU: 73.9"

my place: 79.9"

This was fairly similar to the snowy winter of 2012-2013, when snow slammed my area in March through May 2013. For 2019-2020, the timing of snow was quite different.

[finnster]

Thanks Chinook, appreciate the weather stats.  My location (near Lory State Park NW of Fort Collins) also had pretty good rainfall for June.  As for this last snow season we had an abundance here in the northern foothills - in the 110”+ range.

Despite my hopes to the contrary (one can always hope), I’m getting the distinct feeling the summer will now heat up and dry out.  This has been the pattern for most of the last 20 years (2004 and 2009 stand out as exceptions).  At least June was reasonable though.... Coincidentally, this was also about the timeframe the Atlantic (AMO) shifted to its warm phase, where it’s mostly been since.  If that AMO would switch to a cool phase that might help cool the summers around here (and elsewhere).  That’s one theory at least.....

Another thing that has been noticeable the last several years is the lack of any robust monsoon pattern the second part of the summer (I’m talking about the front range).  I honestly don’t know why this is the case, I’ve just noticed it.

[smokeybandit]

My first spring in northeast Colorado and severe season has been a big dud

[mayjawintastawm]

1 hour ago, smokeybandit said:

My first spring in northeast Colorado and severe season has been a big dud

The duddiest since we arrived in 2010. It'll happen if you stick around long enough. Might come in September, who knows.

[Chinook]

Fort Morgan, CO has jumpstarted our 100 degree heat wave for NE Colorado. It was 100 degrees at 12:15PM.

[ValpoVike]

From a buddy up here in Estes of the comet Neowise.  Photo was taken at 4:15am looking northeast, preceding the sun and roughly along the ecliptic.  He reported that it is very naked eye visible, and noted that it was washed out by the sun around 4:45am.

[finnster]

Not much good news with our weather pattern these days.  On the Bouldercast web site they are talking about the severity of the heat wave, which seems to be centered on Colorado. Also severe drought in southern Colorado that is now creeping north.  Also it appears that the Southwest US monsoon will be late or nonexistent (according to Bouldercast).  Then this fall La Niña is supposed to get established which tends to be dry in southern and eastern Colorado.  Oh boy - things turn quickly don’t they  ?

 

 

 

[mayjawintastawm]

On 7/9/2020 at 10:55 AM, ValpoVike said:

From a buddy up here in Estes of the comet Neowise.  Photo was taken at 4:15am looking northeast, preceding the sun and roughly along the ecliptic.  He reported that it is very naked eye visible, and noted that it was washed out by the sun around 4:45am.

Wow!! Can't wait till it's visible in the evening.

[ValpoVike]

55 minutes ago, mayjawintastawm said:

Wow!! Can't wait till it's visible in the evening.

I think on Sunday, but could be off by a day.

[Chinook]

It got up to 96 to 101 degrees in the Front Range cities, including 98.5 degrees at my house. I put my indoor thermometer outside, in the shade, on the north side of the house, so it didn't get any contribution from direct sunlight. 101 at KFNL airport, 99 at Denver.

 

[smokeybandit]

Alamosa, CO, set both a record low and record high yesterday. Impressive

[finnster]

4 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

Alamosa, CO, set both a record low and record high yesterday. Impressive

Yes very interesting to see this - no doubt the low temp due to the utter lack of moisture in the air now.  

Sad to see the entire state getting engulfed in drought now.  Right now reminds me of the year 2012 when large chunks of Colorado forests burned (in fact as I type this I can look up the mountain and see burn scars from that year).  I hope I’m wrong but am very concerned about the effects this summer heat wave will bring - if you believe what you read (I don’t always) this pattern will persist all summer.  I pray the experts are wrong about this!

[raindancewx]

Albuquerque hit 101 yesterday - but that was sort of an underachievement really, as it actually did get to 94 by Noon. Typically you add 10 degrees from noon to the high here.

Today may be the day though. 

If you look at the subsurface waters, there is no La Nina imminent, but Nino 3 is still cold and getting reinforced. The 2012-13 winter is a similar look to now, pretty cold right by South America but still pretty warm in Nino 4 and only cold neutral in Nino 3.4.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/enso.shtml

 

 

[Chinook]

I took a walk a few minutes ago. Some mixed clouds in the sky made for very nice sunset colors. We still have some breezes of 10-15 mph at sunset with temperatures over 80, maybe 85 at 8:00PM. High temperatures were 94-96 for most areas near here and in Denver. In the afternoon we had varying winds of 10-25mph in the region. Tomorrow, mid- 90's should continue for northern Colorado, with 100-105 in southeast Colorado. Models show a chance of thunderstorms tomorrow, quite possibly with very low total QPF.

[finnster]

We did have a feeble attempt at a thunderstorm a bit ago here in the Bellvue area.  It did wet the ground a little and then high winds dried it up in about 2 seconds.  I don’t know how else to put it this weather sucks 

[Chinook]

NWS Phoenix

[raindancewx]

I'm expecting a bit of a crap winter for much of the West this year, but not so much for temperatures. Mostly for consistent below average precipitation.

A hot high July in NM is almost preceded by a pretty warm December for much of the West, but I think we'll cool off later in the winter. No measurable rain in Albuquerque this July means the odds of an active monsoon are already below 25% using historical precipitation data, and that disfavors heavy December snow/big snowstorms late December historically for NM & CO.

I would like to see a huge August for precipitation down here - it is way overdue. If the Atlantic turns hyperactive for hurricanes that is pretty much always a bad sign for a cold Western winter too (1933, 2005, 2017) - something to watch.

[mayjawintastawm]

And we're only at about 63% of normal precip YTD here in Denver, though DEN airport got its first >0.1" in a while a couple hours ago. 

[finnster]

42 minutes ago, mayjawintastawm said:

And we're only at about 63% of normal precip YTD here in Denver, though DEN airport got its first >0.1" in a while a couple hours ago. 

Hey thanks. Good to hear there was at least a little rain.

Based on what Raindance is saying about what’s ahead for the West, if Denver is just at 63% YTD it seems highly likely you’ll finish the year well below average.  The Fort Collins area is in about the same boat, and southern CO is in the worst shape.  In this era on the CO front range an above average month of precipitation is hard to come by, let alone a year.  The summer months in particular have become very hot and dry in recent years.  This pattern sets in June or July (fortunately the last two June’s have been better) and doesn’t let up until mid-October or so.

[finnster]

2 hours ago, raindancewx said:

I'm expecting a bit of a crap winter for much of the West this year, but not so much for temperatures. Mostly for consistent below average precipitation.

A hot high July in NM is almost preceded by a pretty warm December for much of the West, but I think we'll cool off later in the winter. No measurable rain in Albuquerque this July means the odds of an active monsoon are already below 25% using historical precipitation data, and that disfavors heavy December snow/big snowstorms late December historically for NM & CO.

I would like to see a huge August for precipitation down here - it is way overdue. If the Atlantic turns hyperactive for hurricanes that is pretty much always a bad sign for a cold Western winter too (1933, 2005, 2017) - something to watch.

Thanks Raindance for your great information.  I’m also hoping for a wet August here on the front range.  Doesn’t that seem like an unlikely outcome though given that the monsoon is largely a no-show?

[Chinook]

Denver is already 4.7F above normal for this month. Fort Collins- CSU is 2.4F or higher, with one day of missing data. Today, my area was around 95, when a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for a storm that seemed kind of weak on radar over the mountains. The wind picked up to 40 mph here, my area only got sprinkles. The temperature dropped to around 80 for the late afternoon. Some severe wind reports were close to the Wyoming border. Tomorrow, the NAM has unrealistically low temps, that is, 58 degrees at noon. I don't think it will be that cool. NWS says a high of 80 tomorrow, then getting back to the 90's on Thursday.

I have not yet seen that new comet in the evening sky. I think it's in the evening right now.

[mayjawintastawm]

Part of me hopes for rain in the evenings but more of me hopes for clear skies... starting today, the comet should be visible an hour or so after sunset low in the NW (for me, about halfway between Longs and Mt Evans), climbing a bit higher over the mountains for the next few days.

[ValpoVike]

If you guys haven't had a chance to look at the comet, you should.  I saw it last week in the morning, and again over the past couple of days after sunset.  Last night, it was just dipping below the mountains at 10:25pm so it is rapidly getting higher in the evening sky.  The tail is much more elongated compared to the day prior, but that may be a byproduct of the fact that it was still visible once the sky turned darker.  It was very easily seen naked eye, at least from up here with the reasonably dark skies, and very impressive in field binoculars.  

[mayjawintastawm]

So far for my comet viewing, it's been smoky or cloudy up in the western sky the last 4 days in a row till after 11 PM. No letup in sight with afternoon and evening (mainly dry) convection. Thinking about driving up over the foothills to get a glimpse at some point.