 Hi, Lauma. Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, January 27th. I'm Chief Meteorologist John Ensworth for Lauma Public Media. Taking a look at the moon, we have a full moon at the beginning of this forecast period, with the moon rising about sunset and setting about sunrise as it does. But since the nights are long, it'll be up for over 14 hours. Great time to go out for a cold night walk. Checking on drought, because we're still in very severe drought conditions across the state. If you go from last week into this week, nothing really changes. We are holding steady. We are getting an increased snowpack in the western mountains. And as that starts to melt, it'll start to really show up in the soil data. So there's good news in the future. We just have to wait for some spring to occur. Looking at it nationally, not much changes here either. If you go from last week, take an idea. Look at Oregon and down here in West Texas. Go forward a week. There's a little bit worsening drought, but not much. Everything is sort of holding steady, being in the middle of the winter. Cold air also helps keep water from evaporating from the soil. Speaking of water and soil, looking over the last seven days, pretty much all that we got was down in the Four Corners area, southwestern part of the state. We got a little bit out on the plains up around Denver to Four Columns. We remained high and dry. So the storm system that is pulling out seems to have dropped about two inches, maybe three inches locally around Longmont. We'll get the official measurements on Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. But the storm system was a pretty wet one. It went way down into the deserts southwest. There was snow recorded in Phoenix, which is really rare. And California got a lot of beneficial moisture. They really needed that out there. But the storm centers down to our southeast, sending upslope moisture into the state. Going into Wednesday morning, it's starting to pull out into the plains. You have a warm front that's coalescing to our west. And as that crosses over, we're going to see a sharp warm-up and a quick melt on what we did get. Looking at the ensemble forecast from the GFS over the next 10 days, normal high temperatures staying very steady and normal low temperatures of 17 also. We're at the bottom of winter. We'll start to see temperatures creep up as we go into February. All the models agreed that it was snowing at the beginning of the forecast period, and it did. So that's good. Looking out 10 days, 9 days, we do see the model seeing a very strong signal, lots of agreement that there's something wet coming again. That's about February 4th, February 3rd for the beginning of it. You can see it stretches for a couple days. We'll see why. Let's put this into motion. This is the upper air pattern. Our low is pulling out. That just gave us our big storm, kind of big storm. Then looking out throughout the rest of the week, this big ridge just heats us up until finally going into the end of the month and the beginning of the next trough begins to pass. Once that goes by, again, the ridge comes back. This is what's given us abnormal heat for the summer, fall, and winter so far. Let's take a look at the precipitation going out. Our storm vanishes out under the plains at the beginning of the week. We're high and dry in through the weekend into next week. And then finally something starts to get its act together out in the west, bringing some moisture in. So we can hope that this one stays together. When you're looking at nine, ten days out in the forecast, the models can make up storms. And we've seen that happen repeatedly this winter. It just can't get enough moisture from the gulf, passes too quickly to give us the precipitation we want. Take a look at the cold air. So purples and blues are temperatures below normal where the oranges and the reds are above normal. Their goals are cold air at the beginning of the week. Look how quickly that ridge brings abnormally warm temperatures into the west. And we have a little cold air. Try to push in from the north as we end the month, but the west just keeps warm. It can't say hot, but it's very, very warm for this time of year at the top of the temperature envelope. Finally, around the third or fourth, that cold air spreads down. We're going to see a very sharp cold front. Around the third, give or take a day, and then the cold air really settles in. Be ready. Don't put the coat away. It's going to get cold again. For the North American model, the snow that we see forecasted by it is inch, inch or two, and that's pretty much verified. Only it had most of the snow in the southern counties of Colorado. If you look at what the GFS was calling for, different model, different physics a little bit, different approximations in the math, and it has it all in the western slopes. It looks like sort of a blend of the two happened. The southern counties definitely got better snow than we did up north, and the mountains won again. If you look at the GFS out the next 10 days, starting to scoop in a little bit of that next storm, you can see that the western mountains win again. So this is great that our water for agriculture for the cities, all comes from that snowpack. We need that western slope snowpack. If we don't get over here, at least the mountains and the forest get it. So looking out the next seven days, we start chilly on Wednesday, but rapidly get up to the 50s. Some of the local TV outlets are giving us 60-62 on Friday. I don't know if I'd get that excited about it, but even if it doesn't happen then, early next week it might as well. It's a little front coming in on Friday, Saturday, but most of the precipitation will fall on the mountains. It's not going to do much out on the plains at all. Taking a look at that storm for the third, you can see it's about the best that the GFS paints. It does have a really good wrap-up here around the low-pressure system with a nice shield of snow over most of the state. So that's what we're hoping for, that it does come to be. So for more frequent weather updates, check out Longmont Leader. We'll put these snow totals from Cocoa Ross up there tomorrow. Also get local news for Longmont and everybody around. This has been Chief Meteorologist John Insworth. Keep looking up.