 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, March 6th, 2024. Welcome to March. This is Chief Meteorologist John Insworth for Longmont Public Media. Saturday March 9th will be our new moon. And after some really big sunspot activity on this side of the sun, just some smaller stuff is rotating around. I can't draw from last week to this. No change except my Longmont dot shifted a slightly nationwide. Pretty notable lack of drought in most places, slightly worse up here, up in the Pacific Northwest. But winter, things don't change quickly, at least not in the drying side of things. Looking at smoke, looks like the fires in Texas have been brought under control. There's some smoke probably from South America drifting up, but nothing big. Let's take a look at the animation with quotes of the snowpack. And there we go. As of the 6th, we are right at 100%. We're right on the median line. So that's good news. Yeah, it would be nice to go above, but we do have some more moisture coming in today and next week. So yeah, we'll keep up with it. Of course, the curve keeps rising, so we got to keep it coming. Looking at the precipitation of the last week, the mountains got it. That's what helped keep us up with the median. The plains not so much and eastern plains really not so much. That's about to change. Looking at convection and severe weather chances, stuffing around Texas and Oklahoma. And then, yeah, slight risk, got tornadoes, wind, hail, March stuff. We do have a chance of convection Thursday, all the way back into most of Colorado. So you could see some lighting across the state where the storms get going. That severe weather moves down to the south, and we don't have a chance of thunderstorms come Friday. This always overdoes precipitation, but it is nice to show the fronts and lows. So we have the low down there that's creating that severe weather chance. Here's heavy snow in a tiny band in the foothills, snow in the mountains, and some snow out there. I think they're missing something here. We'll see that in just a second. And then Friday morning, mainly, some snow as the system pulls out. So the ensembles have a really strong precipitation signal. I mean, we're just going to get a good day and a half of stuff. Next week is looking pretty good as well. That's mid-week. Our highs are starting to really climb now. Our expected high temperature goes from 52 to 55, 24 to 27. We're approaching freezing. It doesn't mean we can't get really cold stuff, but maybe that heaviest coat can go back in the closet. Looking at moisture, we have the system gathering in the west here. We've got subtropical moisture streaming into the south. We've got a New England storm over here, so lots of activity. Our notable weather events are this front coming in on Thursday of this week. Kind of messy. It's got some embedded little short waves in there. And we have a bullseye of snow here and snow up in the foothills and near I-25, rain and snow. And a little gap in there where not much might happen. And then next Thursday, well, Wednesday, Thursday, we have a deep cutoff low in the latest run. It actually goes even further south. I just couldn't pull that in. And I do have it in the animation. And look at that. Pretty good coverage of snow and rain. So let's take a look at, this is the latest, taking a look at the first trough coming down. Here's into Friday morning, into Saturday, and we're placed by this big ridge. We warm up very fast after this. Not very cold right now. But then we have this little ripple coming through, and it's surprising. It looks like a pretty strong little trough on Tuesday, but there really isn't any moisture associated with it. It's not until Wednesday that this deeper trough happens, cuts off, and sinks down into northern Mexico, Texas area. For temperatures, at least this time, we do have some really cold air to tap into. It's not rushing down, but for Thursday, Friday, we do have some cold air for that. Now, this is temperature as a departure from normal, and normal as you can see is rising. So it still keeps us in marginal temperatures. There's the warmth over the weekend, into Tuesday, a little cooling, but not much. Then Wednesday, here comes a more of a Pacific looking front. Just cold air coming from there, and it just sinks down with the cutoff low. For moisture, this is precipitate water through the atmosphere, and you can see it's pulling around that low, and above normal for us. Drives out on Saturday into Sunday, very dry. Monday, then here comes that little Tuesday ripple, and it does bring some upper up and a certain moisture with it. Just doesn't seem to do much for us. There's the stronger low coming in Wednesday into Thursday next week, and look at that. Just pulling stuff out of the gulf and throwing it in our direction. It's a lot of moisture. Look at surface moisture now, dew points. You can see on Thursday, we do get good moisture pulled back in up against the mountains before it gets pushed out by Saturday, and a little bit of moisture in there on Monday. Here comes the Tuesday system, and yeah, we've got mid-20 dew points, and they're gone. But for Wednesday, oh goodness, didn't do that. Yeah, continue. We've got to look at how much moisture pours in. We've got 40 dew points here, which a mile up at this time of year. That's a good moisture supply, and then it gets pushed off by northerly winds. So here's the surface storm for Thursday or Friday. Lingers in the mountains a little bit, and the low itself takes off into New England. Look how far up the rain goes. It's a very warm system. Temperatures Monday into Tuesday, and there's the low. Gets the mountains a little. Maybe some sprinkles on the plains. But the net system for Wednesday, Thursday, very heavy snow and rain very close to each other. So again, temperatures will be very marginal. It's going to be not too long lived, but pretty intense, it looks like, and then all that moves off. So over the next five days, we have a fair amount of water. Here's the half inch mark right down along the interstate three quarters of an inch to a blue as inch in the nearby foothills. But as for snow, it looks like only one or two, three inches or so, just around Long Mountain. If you go over towards Boulder, maybe three to five, a little more around Ustas Rocky Mountain National Park, that gap is visible on the plains, just maybe a trace of snow and then a really big hit of a foot, maybe even a foot and a half in places in the northeast corner of the state. This next one is a later model run. I just put this together over about a 12 hour period. You can see how much it's decreased. It's intensified this and decreased the snow in and around I-25 in the foothills. And looking at the Canadian model, again, we see that gap out here in the plains. We see a really tight gradient right up against the mountains with some good snow here. That's probably overdone, six to eight inches in there. And looking over the next 10 days, do you see that next system is being really wet? That's two inches of water. That's including our current water total, whatever comes out of that storm and some really serious snow Wednesday, Thursday. So we'll see, it's a whole week away and the current storm hasn't happened yet. So very warm on Wednesday, cooler on Thursday, marginal temperatures for snow on Friday, but should be able to do it. And then we bounce right back to the 50s and 60s going into next week. Not much of a reflection of that one system on Tuesday. So check out Long Island Leader for frequent weather updates. I'm going to put a snowfall round up there if I can today. This has been Chief Greenhouse with John Insworth, wishing you to keep looking up.