 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, August 16th, 2023. This is chief meteorologist John Enzworth for Longmont Public Media. We have a new moon this very Wednesday. So nothing to see. Not much to see on the sun either. Most of the big sunspot complexes have rotated away and we got a little bit of stuff in the northern hemisphere, but not much. We had drought a month ago. We were completely drought free two weeks ago, sorry I missed a week because of all the school setup stuff I had to do. We had drought sneaking back into the four corners quarter of the state and it's just a little worse this week. Even though we've been in the 90s and really hot, we are so well hydrated, hydrologically that the rest of the state is still completely drought free. Looking nationally, drought has gotten a little worse, where the heat has been the highest across the southern states from Arizona to Texas. Smoke, we still got plenty of fires going on in California, there is one, but Canada and a heavy amount of smoke coming down and we're right on the edge of it. So little shifts on the direction of the wind will bring in haze and poor air quality and then a little shift and we might see everything clear up. Looking the last seven days, things have been pretty dry. We did get a scattering of showers over the drought area, not enough to change anything. Some good amounts again with thunderstorms tracking over the northeast and eastern part of the state and if you go back to my last report two weeks ago, a lot of water up here. We are drought free, but also some good amounts, half inch inch in spots down here. So the western side of the state is finally getting some summer rain. Looking at our animation for severe weather climatology going through June and July. You can see it's really decreasing pretty quickly. Here's the third week of August and yeah, we really should see the hail stop happening and it looks like that is exactly what's happening. Looking at severe weather forecast is up here around the Great Lakes in Minnesota. Just a little chance of convection this afternoon on Wednesday. Same thing, western state. This is the summer North America monsoon bringing chance of thunderstorms. They're really severe and then if you go to Friday, the moisture kind of covers the entire state. So looking at the future forecast map for Wednesday, we have the Intermountain South Rockies in west, the Great Basin area getting some storms. A little bit more to the north, a little bit further north in the mountains in the Great Basin and then for Friday some potential for heavy flooding rains around the Grand Canyon and we get some storms up towards Denver in the northeast part of the state. This is the type of pattern that can help with our only existing drought. You can see temperatures are already dropping. We expect high A7 to 86, so this week of mid 90s is quite a bit above normal. Low 58 down to 56, probably notice it's staying darker longer in the morning and starting to get darker earlier in the evening so we're making the seasonal shift very small storm chances on the ensemble until we get to the end of the forecast period, 10 days out. So here's what it looks like in the water vapor satellite image. Low over here, we get some moisture coming up from the Gulf of California, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. Really the only notable feature, because this is a summer pattern, is I'll take a look forward at Friday night. You can see the big high here. So this is the ridge that's been baking the southern states and it's really kind of dominating the center part of the nation for a while here. But the rotation around it brings southerly equatorial moisture up towards everything in the west. We also have a tropical storm future storm coming up, Hillary. We'll take a look closer at that. So Friday with the high being here, you can see the precipitable water flowing on up. So let's put this in motion. The ridge is right over us now, so we're almost touching 100. As we end the week, it shifts over to Oklahoma area. Here comes the tropical system brushing the Baja. This could bring some significant water in the southern California and then up across that state. It's now over sort of the Missouri area. Big southwest flow over the west. It's kind of building back by the Saturday, August 26th, so the week and a half from now. And it's just still kind of sitting over there. So it goes to our east and puts us in the monsoon flow. With temperatures, we do have a cold front coming down on the eastern side of the high. And out west, this is the cooling due to the moisture with the tropical system, Hillary, coming up. And we're just kind of baking in between, staying above normal. But you can see all that arching up into Canada even. So let's take a look at precipitable water. This is how much above normal and real greens and blues are way above normal and browns are below normal, amounts of atmospheric moisture. Here comes Hillary. So we kind of get missed. Look at all that over California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, western Montana. And then the moisture comes in for us by the end of next week. So you saw in the ensemble there was an increase in moisture. It's not a lot of moisture coming to the west. I think it's a remnants of another tropical system. Sometimes these go out towards Hawaii and travel away. Sometimes they get dragged in to the westerlies for dew point. There's not much to show here because we have a ridge over as kind of suppressing convection. We are in the lower 50s, upper 40s most of the time. So there is a good amount of moisture. Here's ridiculous dew points with the tropical system. We're kind of in the dry areas. The moisture goes up and over through the northern Rockies. Then by the end of next week you can see lots of surface moisture coming in. We start to see low to mid 50s, even upper 50 dew points. I think I saw 60 for a moment. So we should see next weekend a notable change in the weather. So when it comes to convection and thunderstorms, there are more in the western slopes than the upper mountains, higher mountains. A few things are drifting off under the plains. It's not a lot because of that massive amount of moisture up into the west. We're in the dry, into Wednesday. A little bit of stuff happening. The logo is all the way up into Canada there. I see the next old system. By the end of next week you can see thunderstorm coverage really does pick up again. So over the next five days, where we have drought is the best chances of precipitation. Over the next ten days, look at that. It's really one to two inch rain amounts there and then northern mountains. So we are going to remain above normal for the next seven days. Getting very close to 100 on Wednesday and really staying pretty hot. Chances of precipitation kind of pick up Friday-Saturday, but it's not a big chance. Just keep an eye on the western sky. It's probably a good time to get your roof replaced with the dry conditions and lack of severe weather and the outlook. Take a look at Hillary. It's here Wednesday. It's located south of Mexico and it's expected to go up and become a hurricane by 1 p.m. Sunday and then fall apart as it hits colder water and land in southern California. So this could be mudslides and big floods and stuff like that. So keep an eye on the news. They might be getting more than they can handle. So Longmont Leader and Broomfield Leader for local news. This has been Chief Neologous Johninsworth. Keep looking up.