Mountain West Discussion

[mayjawintastawm]

Time for a Spring-Summer thread. Today it was 70 and nice. Snow and ice is gone and flowers emerging.

[Chinook]

Welcome to spring! My place has not had significant snow over 0.1" for a while. I'm pretty sure the snow will come back some time. As for this week: the GFS has 25 kt surface winds and 55kt winds at about 2000ft+ above ground on Tuesday.  I think a high wind warning will happen for some counties of Colorado on Tuesday.

[Chinook]

my area had wind gusts to 48mph-51mph, and it really was windy for over 12 hours, I think

edit: wind gusts over 25kt for 24 straight hours

[Chinook]

My area had wind gusts at least 25kt at KFNL each hour from 15z Tuesday to 01z (this hour), so that's 32 hours in a row, I think.

The 06z GFS and 00z ECMWF, and sort of the 12z ECMWF today had a big snow storm in the next Monday-Wednesday time frame. I think that's low probability for snow over 4" but we'll keep an eye on it. Really, it is about time for snow to make a return.

[raindancewx]

We've had many days this Spring in New Mexico with dew points in the -10 to -20 range. Suspect that's part of why the Spring has been particularly tornadic to date. Can't be typical to infuse dry lines with air quite that dry. I don't remember seeing dew points this low in the 10 years I've been out here.

[Chinook]

a nice weather-related joke from NWS Grand Forks. They had blizzard conditions for many hours in central North Dakota.

 

 

 a windy weather reporting station in Fort Collins-- 8 calendar days had wind gusts of 30mph+ since 4/4 (including 4/4 evening)

 

[smokeybandit]

Wind wind go away.

I mean if it was raining or snowing I wouldn't be complaining, but this extended wind is getting annoying

[n1vek]

Euro pulled back on the precip for the front range again with next weeks storm. Makes total sense, go with the trend, etc - getting very worried about fire season and I just don't believe a productive monsoon exists anymore. 

[Chinook]

Useful plot for finding the correlation between scoring differential and true winning percentage (wins/games.) The Avalanche have the highest number of wins in the history of the Avalanche/Nordiques franchise. Several of the top teams in the NHL are trying to overcome some playoff futility in recent history, including Avalanche, Panthers, Maple Leafs, Oilers, Wild.

[mayjawintastawm]

Hockey is more fun to talk about than weather, where a really interesting Spring multi-hazard event is likely to turn into nothing more than another windy, extreme-fire-danger event because of lack of moisture. Guess there could be a "fire-nado" outbreak. NWS Boulder is really amped up about it in the late afternoon AFD.

[Chinook]

both posted April 19th

 

near Cody, in northern Wyoming. I guess they briefly had a category 4 hurricane or something like that

[smokeybandit]

Just a wee bit windy today

[Chinook]

As for my place, I think I got to 82-88, with just some breezes in the afternoon, with more winds of 25mph or better in the evening. Probably a lot more tomorrow.

There are some major fires starting to burn I think west of Las Vegas, New Mexico and other places.

 

 

 

If you plot all the severe thunderstorm reports and non-thunderstorm reports, you get this. Some fire reports are hidden under wind report icons.

 

[ValpoVike]

A surprisingly good snow event ongoing up here. I didn't expect any accumulations at all today, but close to 3" over the past 1.5 hours. This is really good to see up here in the Larimer County foothills. 

Edit- at 6” now this is so good to see

[n1vek]

3 hours ago, ValpoVike said:

A surprisingly good snow event ongoing up here. I didn't expect any accumulations at all today, but close to 3" over the past 1.5 hours. This is really good to see up here in the Larimer County foothills. 

Edit- at 6” now this is so good to see

Nice to see an overperforming event at least somewhere. A Basin looks to be doing pretty well. Ground is legitimately wet here in Arvada, hopefully we get some luck and this carries on for the evening. Long-range models make it look like this is the last chance for precip until the 2nd week of May.

[mayjawintastawm]

April at Centennial (closest climate site to me) had 0.01" precip, lowest on record and if Denver had not had a brief thunderstorm a couple days ago it would have been lowest on record too. My house had 0.02", and 0 snow. I wonder where they keep records for windiest months.

Yesterday they were predicting 0.4" QPF at my house for tonight and Monday, today 0.2". I'll celebrate if it's more than 0.05". I think I won't plan any new in-ground vegetation this year.

 

EDIT Monday 7 AM: Now THAT was a nice surprise!! Good round of thunderstorms and 0.74" rain. Better yet is that this was pretty widespread over the area. Need more surprises like that.

[n1vek]

Watching the models constantly pull the rug on precipitation has been frustrating. 

[smokeybandit]

God love ya GFS

 

[smokeybandit]

Got over 0.2" of rain (most since like October) and now snow to finish it off.

[n1vek]

2 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

God love ya GFS

 

Euro was showing some pretty cracked outcomes for this rain event we just had a few days ago. 

Just need one of these big storms to materialize for the benefit of my lawn. 

[Chinook]

My area had 0.11" rain in April and 0.30" rain last night. The grass has been quite dry. I don't think many lawns can run their sprinklers, because they probably activate sprinklers after the chance of frost is gone. We've got 85% humidity today. That's something.

edit: western Nebraska really does have accumulating snow today, so, kind of a rude awakening for May, but it should help with the drought, with maybe some 0.5" water equivalent going to help the crops as soon as it melts.

[ValpoVike]

I logged .44" overnight.  The interesting thing is that I missed the snow line somewhere between 100'-200'.  My neighbors above me had a decent coating this morning, while I had wet yard and deck.  I'll take the moisture any way I can get it though.  For the storm next week mentioned above, the plains amounts seem crazy high, but perhaps the amounts in the higher elevations are not too crazy.  The Euro has a similar look, albeit slightly lower in the mountains and a lot lower in the plains...especially along and south of the WY border.  Will be interesting to look at this again late in the week to see if it holds...we can get some impressive snows in early May, but temps are a real tricky thing.

[WxUSAF]

Pretty night at Coors Field 

[mayjawintastawm]

That is one large left field!

[n1vek]

On 4/24/2022 at 7:43 PM, n1vek said:

Nice to see an overperforming event at least somewhere. A Basin looks to be doing pretty well. Ground is legitimately wet here in Arvada, hopefully we get some luck and this carries on for the evening. Long-range models make it look like this is the last chance for precip until the 2nd week of May.

Aged quite poorly. At least there has now been one example of "models giveth" vs the constant trend of taketh as we creep closer to a forecasted event. The rains the last few days have been quite nice.

[Chinook]

We got 0.30" to 0.80" of precipitation (rain and snow) in Larimer County as of 7:00AM on the CoCoRAHS, and some from 7:00AM to maybe 11:00AM and later. Some snow was reported at Estes Park and above.

[mayjawintastawm]

0.94" at our house since Sunday, most of it Sunday night. A nice respite even if brief.

[Chinook]

Maybe around 1.0" of much needed rain for me, and about 1.29" since the beginning of the month. Some of these storms have been generous to the Plains. We can say there has been some drought relief for northern Kansas and Nebraska. At least this chart says my area got 100% of average precipitation over two weeks.

 

[aggiegeog]

The Hermit Peak Fire in NM is just 5 miles south of my family's place and winds turn southerly today. The fire has burned over 200,000 acres so far and has been burning for a month already. There are still two months until the monsoon hopefully kicks in. Hopefully winds calm down enough for firefighters to slow the spread and get the helicopters and planes in the air consistently before then.

 

https://nifc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=bfb95b09412840c0afd99626ea2bee4f

[ValpoVike]

4 hours ago, aggiegeog said:

The Hermit Peak Fire in NM is just 5 miles south of my family's place and winds turn southerly today. The fire has burned over 200,000 acres so far and has been burning for a month already. There are still two months until the monsoon hopefully kicks in. Hopefully winds calm down enough for firefighters to slow the spread and get the helicopters and planes in the air consistently before then.

 

https://nifc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=bfb95b09412840c0afd99626ea2bee4f

 

Sorry to hear this man.  I totally understand what you are going thru...been there.  A threatening wildfire is huge stress, but a long duration threat is a whole different level of stress.  I had Cameron Peak fire two years ago hang in the mountains to our west for 3 months before it roared down.  Thankfully it all worked out and no personal damage, but the stress of potentially losing a cherished home is intense...almost PTSD level.  Hang in there and know that there are a lot of very dedicated professionals doing all that they safely can.  

EDIT: Also the biggest thing your family can do (if you can still access the property) is to mitigate around the home.  Take out any trees near the house, cut down any grass, and remove plants from around the home.  Also, clear the immediate area around the home of anything that can burn (furniture, firewood, junk, etc).  This really made a difference in our neighborhood, where fire blackened all around many homes but they didn't burn due to successful mitigation.