 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, September 13th, 2023. This is Chief Meteorologist John Ensworth for Longmont Public Media. New moon Thursday, tomorrow, so nothing to see there. Not much to see on the sun except for a good cluster over here and some stuff facing Earth. But yeah, after a long period of quiet, many years, it's kind of nice to see the sun doing things again. Reminded of the first day of fall, Saturday, just after midnight, the 23rd. Drought conditions from last week to this definitely worsen in the southwestern corner, but the rest of the state is holding well. I look at my lawn and yeah, I can probably turn the sprinklers off now. Looking nationally, we have a fair amount of drought in the upper Midwest and pretty good belt of drought from Arizona to Texas, and all of it got just a touch worse. That California that was in, it's mega drought is totally out of drought still. Smoke, we should be in the clear and it looks pretty good out there. We have moisture around that's reducing visibility, but it's not really smoke right now. It's going to start getting cold up here and we're going to start getting winter snows or early fall snows. Hopefully that puts a tamp down on the fire. For precipitation, the Central Mountains and Southeast really did well this last week. I think I got about just under half inch of rain in my backyard and that's about what that shows here. Again, our severe weather climatology going through May, June, July, August, September, the third week of September, it's now officially unusual to get severe weather. Though we did have a marginal risk a few days ago. No actual hail or severe weather, so I was trying to say. Severe weather reports were sent in from anywhere in Colorado, so that marginal risk was really, really marginal. Looking at the actual convective potential and like that, we got monsoonal stuff down here in the desert southwest with a marginal risk. Only the southwest part of the state has some thunderstorm activity today. And for Thursday, chance of convection, Friday chance of convection, that's it. So looking at the national maps, we have potentially some heavy rain with thunderstorms slowly moving down south. Then we get our precipitation moving in Thursday and Friday. Over the next 10 days, normal temperatures dropped from 85 to 75. We were in the 90s just recently, but now we are hovering around that area, 49 to 45. So we're not normal 90 temperatures into the 30s yet, but we're heading that way very quickly. Thursday or Friday precipitation event coming and the chance of showers next week. Water vapor satellite image does show moisture. Most of this seems by its motion to be out of the Pacific or at least low level maybe coming up, being carried off to the east once it gets to the higher levels of the atmosphere. So for Friday, this is our next storm system. You can see this trough associated with the low up in Canada. The trough stretches back down into the desert southwest and we are in the right place for a good period of lift. Here's Lee out here, starting to head for the Canadian and US border. Moisture for Friday, Thursday night looks really good and the surface map for a 6-hour period there, it has some embedded thunderstorms and like that. So yes, we are going to get some more water. Then Sunday comes in the beginning of next week, has a big ridge re-established itself in the west, but heights are lower and temperatures shouldn't go back to the 90s. This is the last 90s we'll see from last week. Probably not, but over the next 10 to 15 days, 90 is unlikely and it gets harder and harder every day for that to happen. Let's put everything into motion. You can watch Lee coming up here. Here's our trough coming down. It's kind of slow and passing so we get a good day of stuff that is moving into the upper level pattern on the system, moving into Maine and Canada and on then the ridge moves in for Monday. There's this trough from the west coast putting us on the uphill side of a trough in the next week. So we will get a chance of showers, little ripples go by. The upper trough comes down the west coast and the ridge is getting established over on the east coast and high in the central plains as well. We should watch the gulf or something develop down there. So we got the cool air moving out from this last batch. We got cool air lingering in the mountains in the Friday. That cold front comes in on Thursday or Friday keeping the cool kind of lingering around. Into Sunday the heat is re-establishing itself in the west. Cool air is slow to move into Texas. Real heat in the west. Here's another cold front coming down. Keep an eye on that. There's convection in the afternoon Tuesday, more widely scattered on Wednesday next week. That's that trough coming down to the west coast much cooler than normal air. We're sort of caught here on the ridge stuff with heat. So we're looking at moisture. Of course with the hurricane lots of moisture out there, excuse me, don't have a cough button. Then the moisture here gets pushed down by Saturday and Sunday. We dry out quite significantly and you can see this moisture in the Rockies trying to get re-established, more moisture kind of coming in from the west and the south Tuesday and Wednesday. We could see some convection and then dry air kind of comes in after that. For dew points, we start with dew points pretty high as temperatures drop, 40, 49, 50 dew point is pretty significant, 55 so not far away. Don't have a cough button. Then for the weekend beginning of next week it's dry. Lots of moisture really close to the state and it does get pulled back in a little bit now and then. Watching for the convection and strongness here at Thursday into Friday looks like a nice period of 24 hours of elevated rain chances in the southern mountains and then it moves away. You can see Lee going up and away, coming in on Monday, completely dry Sunday Monday then Tuesday, a little bit of stuff around there Tuesday night and in the mountains on Wednesday but that's about it. For the next five days, south central mountains get more than most folks snow. Look at that. The snow map is back. We get some higher elevation snows, there's Pikes Peak, some higher elevations here than in the southwestern part of the state. For the next 10 days add a little bit more but that's about a quarter to a half inch in the Longmont area and there's our snow a little bit more piles up in the very highest elevations. So the 70s going into Thursday up for 60s and Friday with the storm pretty good chance of rain Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. We warm up into the 80s with the ridge at the beginning of next week with low storm chances. I could be convinced to up to pop chances on Tuesday. So here's Lee. It's got a large area of hurricane force winds, still a major hurricane but it's weakening to hurricane and then tropical storm status as it gets close to New England. Still places from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine are going to see a lot of rain if not much wind. Check out Longmont Leader for more frequent weather and news updates. This has been Chief Muir of just China and sort of saying keep looking up.