 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, November 15th, 2023. This is chief meteorologist John Insworth for Longmont Public Media. Monday November 20th in two Thanksgiving week. We have a first quarter moon. It's going to be beautiful if you take a walk anytime that week. Sun, only big sunspot clusters kind of moving away on the right side of the sun at this point. This is about the blankest I've seen it for quite a while. We had a drought from last week to this week, a little bit worse than the south and northwest. So yeah, we are going quite a long time without rain. We had so much water in the earlier part of the year that we are still drought free and two-thirds of the state. Looking nationally, things are a little worse south of us as well and a little bit out here in the southeast states. The California and up into the inner mountain west is drought free. It's pretty shocking from how deep a drought they were in just a year ago. I guess people are calling it the mega drought. Well, mega drought is over for now. Looking at smoke. Not much going on. A little fire up here. A little bit of smoke here and there. But nothing to talk about. Colorado is pretty much air clear. Looking at the snowpack, you can see each little snow event that we've had. And now it's kind of, what's there is staying but we're drifting behind normal. So we're getting down to the lower part of the graph. But still early, one good strong could take us any place up into this good region. Higher mountains got some precipitation over the last week. A little bit in the lower levels we had just, I saw the sidewalk get wet a few times. I don't think we got any snow at the lower elevations. So yeah, starting a little bit of that snowpack up there, but it's isolated to that part of the state. Looking for severe weather, nothing to talk about. Southwest and then South Florida could get some thunderstorms, but just everyday type. For Thursday, same thing and for Friday, pretty similar. Looking at the surface analysis map, we got a storm in the southwest and that's associated with those storms. And the same south of the stationary front, you got the warmer air. For Thursday we do get some mountain snows and little rain showers that come over the northern 925 corridor. It sure doesn't look like much at all. It's a very small weakening system, but the mountains, some lucky spots will get a few inches. Going to Friday, the next storm is coming towards us. We're kind of dry for the most part. Our normal high temperature has dropped from 52 to 47. The normal lows are really low now, 24 down to 20s are going to be normally expecting temperatures in the teens really soon. That's not happening, not yet. Here's our Monday system, little more coherent, but it's not a big storm. And then there's something at the end of next week, around Thanksgiving or after Thanksgiving. Water vapor, there's the moisture coming up out of the tropics, that storm out west. It's giving them some nice mountain snows and some lowland rains, but it is weakening as it approaches us. Here's the system over Florida, dry in between. So looking at the upper air pattern for Thursday noon, I do have this little pinch in the jet stream coming over that, so it's going to give us a little chance of mountain showers and maybe something on the lowlands. There's a system sitting off the coast there. Here's the trough causing convection over Florida. And this is what the surface looks like with the little snow and the highest elevations, great showers on the western slopes, storm in the southwest and the southeast. Next important thing is Monday morning and there's the good little shortwave coming through. It's going to be moving fast, that's the problem that's going to go by us very quickly. Not pulling a lot of cold air, not pulling a lot of moisture. But there is pretty heavy snow, so we might see a good burst. The GFS doesn't not give us anything along I-25, but it's possible, still, things could change. So let's put it all in motion, again it's a pretty quiet weather pattern. There's a hint at the end of Thanksgiving that things might really change and we'll try to take it out that far. So here's Saturday and Sunday and then here comes this shortwave from Monday, diving down over us, so low right there, pretty strong jet stream overhead. A few north winds, so it'll be cold, not super cold but cold. Then Wednesday, Thursday and into Friday you can see a big blob of cold air coming down from the north and that is traveling a lot slower. It is staying north of us and the lobe swings through end of the weekend. So I could give us a cold fetch. Here's the abnormally warm temperatures, oh my goodness, look at that. So then we get this little ripple of cool on Thursday and we're right back to above normal, a lot above normal. I mean 60s and almost 70 is a lot above normal right now. Then the cold air comes in on Monday and it's pretty good shot, you're going to feel this one, you're going to get a coat out and it goes all the way down to Texas and into the Gulf and behind it in the west is warmth but we've got this river of cold as pool that's kind of trying to slide down the east side of the Rocky so you can see another strong front going after Friday after Thanksgiving, very cold air on the eastern side of the Rocky is not so much on the western slope and like that. Water vapor, this is actually precipitable water but it would look like water vapor in an image and yeah we're kind of in between, we've got a good ribbon moisture coming over Saturday and Sunday so there is some mid-atmospheric moisture for this thing to operate on on Monday but it dries out and moves off pretty quickly. For dew points we're pretty dry, there's a little pocket of moisture that comes in Thursday and Friday and it's dry in the mountains going into Sunday, the moisture is out here, it's trying to get back to us, cold front swings in, the deeper moisture stays over in Kansas and shockingly dry air comes in by Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday very very dry, extremely dry, negative 10, negative 9 dew points in this pocket coming down on Friday after Thanksgiving with the cold front, yeah pretty interesting. So let's look at the smallness of these storms, here comes the first one for Thursday and Friday the lowest way down on the Texas Panhandle and just doesn't give us much uplift at all, dry through the weekend, little showers in the western slopes, Sunday, higher mountains and then this storm kind of zips on through on Monday so I think lower elevations should see some snow, it just doesn't look like much, certainly doesn't not look like at this time school closing snow levels, here's Thursday and Thanksgiving and then the day after Thanksgiving Friday, so it looks like a little better storm but nobody's going to be going to school so no school day thoughts there, so the next five days with this system the wind direction will be such that you get uplift on this side of the Rockies and sinking air on this side of the Rockies, sinking air, warms and dries going further from the dew point or relative humidity of 100% so it just gets this rain shadow or snow shadow effect over here so even if it's going crazy up here it'll just be windy and dry down here, looking at the next ten days we do get a little bit, there's a quarter inch of moisture out pulling in the next storm and maybe some snow, that's two to three inches along I-25, one to two so we can hope, so for the next few days really warm and mostly dry, 60's all the way through till Monday and it's not cold enough for daytime snow if it rains that high, so nighttime early morning at nighttime snow and we'll see, then it really quickly goes above normal again after that, so check out Long Lawn Leader for frequent weather updates and great local news, this has been Chief Mural, just John Innsworth saying keep looking out.