 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning of Friday, March 29th, 2024, chief meteorologist John Innsworth for Longmont Public Media had stuff shift around on my weekly schedule and maybe I have to switch to Fridays as our start of the week. I don't know, but this week that's what we're doing. Monday April 1st, no joke, sorry, third quarter moon in the early morning skies we're getting closer to a total solar eclipse off some details and weather forecasts for that Texas and North for next week, probably won't be Friday. I'll try to get it out on Wednesday, but one more quarter moon until the eclipse. Now this thing's covered, a big mass of sunspots that caused lots of aurora over the earth over this last week or so, they are now rotating away. Looking at drought conditions, we had a little bit of decrease in drought in the south and about two thirds of the state is drought free. Looking nationwide, we saw a big decrease in drought conditions and a big swath in the great likes of the desert southwest and for smoke and the fires down in the southeastern states, it's wrapping around out there, but the west is clear for once, speaking year by year. Okay, let's take a look at the animation for snowpack. We stayed below normal until our big storm brought us to normal, then another one popped its way above and then the latest has this heading for this mean peak actual water content median. So this is snowpack depth, but this is taking into account how much water you get if you melt it and we are kind of aiming for it. So if we can just keep the snow coming in, we'll have a good water year, overall 108% of normal. Last last storm, Sunday into Monday, we got about four or five inches, which is over my forecast. I thought about half inch to three was reasonable and then down in Boulder, five, six, almost eight inches of snow. Up in the mountains, nine, eight, here's 11.5, 11 inches over here. So yeah, another good shot of water. You can see that water, half inch to an inch totals throughout much of the central part of the state. The planes got skipped, but I guess they're still doing okay from previous storms. This is our first frame of the severe weather climatology where we are in the end of March. We're entering April where severe weather can start occurring. You'll see this expand and engulf parts of Colorado over the next month or so, and then retreat back as we get into the summer. So we'll add a week of normal expected severe weather. Looking at the actual expected severe weather, it's out here around Chicago and Southwest. We got a chance of convection occurring in the northwest part of the state on Friday. Again, we're starting on Friday this week. And right including the long lot, four columns like that might see a little thunder. For Saturday, that clears out. And then Sunday we have, so the northwest half of the state has a chance for some thunder again. For Friday PM, we got some snow. They just don't get it, it's too warm here. This should be rain in here, but it's Colorado, must be snow. I guess that's the idea. For Saturday, it's just in the mountains. And then for Sunday, we have, yay, rain in the lower elevations and chances of snow rain mixed in the mountains. So looking at the ensemble forecast, our normal temperatures go from 58 to 60 for a high. Our normal lows go from 30 to 31. So we're almost going to get above freezing for our expected. The best that I've heard is that you should wait until Mother's Day to turn on your sprinkler system. So we can still get some real serious cold air throughout April and into May. Don't do it yet. The ensembles here have a really strong signal for precipitation on Monday. I'm giving it a lower percent chance, more like 50 to 75 percent chance. But yeah, we'll probably see rain. We're definitely getting rain now on Friday and the signal is pretty weak for that. Looking at the moisture, we do have a lot of moisture streaming into the state. Here's a subtropical jet. Here's more flow from the subtropics. And yeah, the West has moisture. California is still getting a lot of rain. Looking to the future, the upper level feature for Monday is this cutoff low with a deep trough extending down to the Southwest. We're here with it pushing moisture back. In the animations, we'll see that surge of moisture at all levels coming in. It brings in rain, snow, mix. Even the mountain lower elevations will be rain. It's just not a lot of cold air in this and it's moving kind of quickly. After that, a big ridge return. So we go probably into our 70s for Wednesday, Thursday, we'll see. But yeah, it might really start to feel like spring. This is a little bit of that low cutoff low still sinking down across Texas with a little cool air pool with it. So let's put this in motion. Going Friday into the weekend, here comes our cutoff low rolling through. When it's not connected to the jet stream well, then it goes slower. So you can see it kind of connects and then reforms again. So into Wednesday, here comes the ridge over us. The midweek is dry and really warm. There's our cutoff low drifting through and eventually reconnects and gets pulled away. Here comes another low for the next weekend. And that kind of swings north west of the state. So temperatures above normal going into the weekend. It's the reds, white is normal and blues are below normal. Purples are a lot below normal, pink is way above normal. So for Monday, we do see the cool air come in. A little cold front spread down the plains. Sink into Texas with the cutoff low. We are quickly back to above normal with the cool south of us and the southeast of us. For Friday next week, still above normal. Then we have cold air coming in from the southwest with the next system. We'll see what that happens. This is precipitable water. So abnormal atmospheric moisture levels are green, dry as brown. And you can see a good flow from the tropics coming up into this low. Sits in pools for a little bit, gets shoved back around the low and then gets pushed out. Looking at dew points, this is surface moisture. You can see the green here is above what we normally would expect in this area. And it's lingering around. The low pulls back a good tongue of 30, 35 dew point temperature. So again, we're above normal. So we'd probably see rain rather than snow. It's too warm and then it dries out after that. Let's look at the actual precipitation for Friday. We see the rain coming off the mountains into Sunday. It's north of us and west of us. Then the low forms gives up slope and rain. Some people might see a change over to snow now and then, especially on Monday morning. Maybe again, late Monday. But yeah, it's not going to be much on the lower elevations, one to three inches up in the mountains. It's just not strong storm. So here's Friday next week. There's that low sinking into the west again and passing to our northwest. Looks like a little wave might come through, but the western mountains get most of it. For the next five days, we might see a quarter inch of moisture. And that doesn't come as snow. Here's a trace of snow on the west side of Longmont. Boulder seeing maybe a couple inches. I think that's really optimistic, but we'll see. And then over the next 10 days, it really doesn't change. There's not much more coming in. The map almost looks identical. So fifties and sixties into the weekend. Monday, we might only reach into the forties, upper forties or mid forties. But I'm giving it 51. I'm seeing a little warmer stuff there. So a 35% chance of precipitation, mostly cloudy on Monday. The precipitation comes mainly Sunday afternoon and evening for Longmont. Easter morning forecast, sunrise is at 6.34 AM. And the temperature should be 36 degrees. So not horribly cold, mostly clear. 20% cloud cover, winds east at four miles per hour. So you won't feel much of a wind chill if you're going to sunrise service. Okay, March is also starting too. Sorry, April is starting too. So looking back at March, they gave us equal chances of above and below normal. I think we ended up being a little above normal for temperatures. And for April, not much the same locally, but more warmth up across Canadian border. They gave us above normal precipitation. And yeah, with a few of those storms, especially with the foot of snow, and three feet plus in the mountains, four or five feet place. That was definitely above normal precipitation month. And they've got us in equal chances of above or below normal with dried below us and moist to the northeast. So that's it. Check out the Longmont leader for frequent weather updates. I'm going to go do that now. Update it through the weekend. This has been Chief Miroldro's, John Insworth, urging you to keep looking up.