 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, November 18th I'm Chief Meteorologist John Insworth for a long amount of public media. We're going without video today. Sorry about that Our first quarter moon occurs Sunday this week, November 22nd 48% illuminated I'm interested in commune sets at midnight Checking on drought from last week to this week almost no change whatsoever It's a slight worsening of the drought down in southwestern part of the state, but that's all Looking nationally the long-term drought now extends up and down the spine of the Rockies and a little bit out to the west coast through Oregon Transportation for the last seven days was good news for the burn regions They had up to two to three inches and locally more up here around red-feathered lakes And over on the western slopes half inch to inch amounts were pretty widespread But because the moisture is coming from the west and the air dropped off of the Rockies down to lower elevations that down slope Dried the air and all we had was wind and a lot of it last weekend Wednesday noon Gigantic high-pressure ridge the center around Brownsville standing all the way up Canada We have a trough on the west and east coast Apparently like this does not change very quickly when the wavelength is about the same size as the entire nation You don't get much motion But what we do see is little ripples in the flow starting to come in Because of that we are above normal temperatures now and we're going to return to normal temperatures into the Thanksgiving week Moisture at the surface is extremely low, but moisture in the middle and upper atmosphere is pretty good So we're gonna get some nice sunrises and sunsets Upper-level clouds coming through the ridge locally Smokers not really expected the model thinks that we could still have some here from the troublesome fire I don't think that that's actually occurring There's a little fire activity out on the Nevada, California border sending some smoke just north of us Normal temperatures drop from 50 to 46 over the next 10 days while low temperatures go from 23 down to 20 The temperatures in the daytime at least the normals are dropping pretty quickly We start out above normal at the beginning this period and then pretty much stay within that normal range For the rest of the week There's Thanksgiving out here You see one two three Minor cold fronts that will be coming in Thursday afternoon Monday, and then again on Wednesday next week each are followed some time later By a chance of rain. It's not great, but there's some small chance of precipitation occurring Freezing That's right through this part of the graph and most of the time temperatures are remaining above freezing It's just in the overnight hours pre dawn that it could be cold enough for that to come down a snow if anything falls You can look at the temperature anomaly. This is how warm it is above normal of the reds and oranges across the Nation and that's with that large ridge see temperatures 10 to 20 25 degrees above normal this week I'm taking a quick jump forward to Thanksgiving Sorry about that little formatting there, but temperatures on the east side of the Rockies Just a little bit below normal not much It's about five to ten degrees cooler than normal and just go right over the continental divide And you have temperatures about five to ten degrees above normal So by Saturday the ridge is still kind of here, but this trough is beginning to Depress it. We're getting a little west to east zonal flow This ripple will bring in that next cold front Tuesday next trough is a little deeper and it will definitely get more wind around but It's just not a lot of moisture as we'll see in just a moment the Thanksgiving There's a trough in the northern branch of the jet stream Skirting by pretty strong winds aloft but this is the precipitable water anomaly so the green temperatures so our green colors are moisture above Normal the total amount of water that could be squeezed out of the atmosphere and the browns are below normal and the Entire nation basically has a very dry atmosphere around Thanksgiving So even though the energy is there to create Snow and rain very low is going to be able to form So over the next ten days you see the mountains getting three four eight inches Lucky spots of snow along I-25 virtually nothing a little bit on the Palmer divide as a trace to tenth of an inch But looking at the actual amount of water that falls we're getting a little bit of Rain out here in the southeastern plains, which is good for them and some good moisture up in the mountains totaling to almost an inch But again right around Denver boulder four columns looks very dry So over the next seven days we cool down with our succession of cool fronts We warm up a low on Saturday drop again. Just a little roller coaster ride with very small chances of precipitation From our local news and frequent weather updates check out longmont leader dot com This has been chief mural just John is worth keep looking up