The cold front went through, did you notice? It’s moved south, about a Pueblo to Gardner, Kansas line now, around 7am. The jet sort of fell apart, largely over Canada right now with a trough Billings-Las Vegas kind of acting like the body part it looks like, a lot of disturbance aloft across the west. On the ground here, a moist and cool airmass followed the cold front in, extending now from the Palmer Divide across the northeast quadrant of the state. A lot of wet, some disturbance, a little heat. Those Storm Prediction Center people, working all night, say a slight risk of severe thunder bumpers to the south and east of Denver and a marginal risk along the front range, I-25 corridor and northeast plains.
So, we’re looking at seeing some bumpers get started pretty early, around 1 along the foothills up Boulder way, spreading south to the Parker Divide and moving east reaching DIA by 3. Not calling for hail yet, a little weather dance to some CCR might keep it that way. Meanwhile, they are predicting hail to show down toward Colorado Springs, around 3. Other side of the Parker Divide, that high ridge stretching out into the plains really does generate a lot of our weather.
We’ll dry from west to east, Bumpers done with Boulder by 5, south metro by 6 and DIA by 7. They’ll persist in points east of us on into the night.
We’re easing into a normal summer pattern for the next few days, normal temps, nice mornings, few bumpers in the afternoons. There will be a string of surface troughs form and move east along the east side of the mountains, caused by westerly flow aloft across the mountains curling into the extra space afforded them east. The circulation around a low pressure trough in this hemisphere is counter-clockwise, known in the biz as Cyclonic. It draws air from the higher pressure outside toward the lower pressure in the center of the trough. Coriolis–earth spinning–gives it a little twist so it pulls whatever is down over Texas into the front range, which is gulf coast moisture. So, the rain hitting your head in the afternoons has spent more time at the beach lately than you have, enjoy it.
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