 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week, beginning Wednesday, October 11th, 2023. This is chief meteorologist John Hemsworth for Longmont Public Media. We have a very special new moon, Saturday, October 14th, rising very close to sunrise time and setting close to sunrise time, maybe more so than normal, because we have an eclipse coming Saturday morning. There are three types of eclipses, partial, annular, and total, which is not the best picture for a total, but should be totally dark with the sun's outer atmosphere around it. But this is what the eclipse is for people along the central path. We are not going to see that in Longmont, but we will see a good chunk of the sun covered out. So we have the path here coming in through Oregon and going down off of the coast of Corpus Christi, and it is clipping the Four Corners area and communities in very southwestern Colorado that if you are inside that darker orange or red band on the map, you will see sunlight all the way around the moon for a little while. I think it's over four minutes inside the sun like that, because the moon is at a more distant point in its elliptical orbit, and we are kind of average in distance from the sun right now, so it's not as small as it can be. So some of the stats are, first contact will be 9.14 am, mountain time, mid or maximum partial eclipse is at 10.35, and it all ends at 12.05, the sun going back to being just a circle. This is a computer simulation of what it will look like from Longmont. It's pretty well covered. The cool thing is if you do go out, let me just straight up warn, do not look at this eclipse. Even if you go to the path of maximum annularity, it's going to damage your eyes. You don't stare at the sun, your brain is made not to stare at the sun, and people override that when they hear the word eclipse. So don't look at this with your eyes, definitely not with binoculars or telescopes or anything like that. You will destroy your eye. So no other way to say it more plainly. There are eclipse glasses I ordered a pack of five from Amazon, and I got it here overnight. So you can probably still order some certified ISO solar viewing glasses. And since there are some spots like that, you might be able to see those naked eye through the glasses. So also if you look to go out around the mid eclipse, take a look under trees. Trees still have a lot of leaves on them. Look at the spots of light coming through the leaves, and you'll see all these little tunnel clipping shaped images of the sun. So you can observe it that way as well. You can do a pinhole camera. You can Google that and see how a pinhole camera can project an image of the sun on a piece of paper below it. It's as simple as cutting a little square in an index card, putting some aluminum foil over it, poke it with a little needle or pin, and then put another card below it, and just adjust. The card on top gives you the shade you need, and you'll see the sun. So lots of ways to do it safely, just don't look up. That being said, I am opening up Cherry Wood Observatory from 9.30 to noon for anybody who wants to come see it. I have an almost $200 filter that goes over the entire front of the telescope and blocks out 99.99% of the light. You can see activity on the surface of the sun where it's not covered, see the sunspots and other interesting features like that, and of course you'll get to see the big dark notch taken out of the sun. So feel free to come by. I'm not going to put the address here. If you look on next door and search Cherry Wood Observatory Eclipse, you will find me. That is what the sun looks like with sunspots. So it's quite possible you might make out these with your solar viewing glasses. Definitely we'll see it in my telescope. So taking a look at drought, getting back to the weather. It's been a long time there on Eclipse. Things are getting a little worse on the western slopes with lack of rain. Naturally nothing really changed. There's a little bit of drought relief up in the northwest, a little bit worse right here, but everything else kind of stayed the same. Again, it's smoke. We still have some smoke lingering around. I just looked at the window from school here and saw a small fire. It looked like it was somewhere in Lyons, Destas area. Not really sure. I'm not used to the angle from Loveland looking up into the mountains from Longmont. I can tell you where everything is. All right, so we got rid of our severe weather animation, but we start frame one of our snow animation and it says we're at 140% normal because there's been a dusting up there. Yeah, we're still above normal. That's great. This next storm that was going to really give us a bump and we're going to see this happen. So we just needed this starting graphic. For the last seven days, precipitation has been miserable. I mean, that's nothing. It's tenth of an inch or less in just a couple of spots. Looking at severe weather possibilities, climatologically, we should be getting out of it, but in reality we do have a marginal risk out here and we have a kind of a tropical like thing that's going to go across Florida. We have a chance of convection Wednesday today with this storm coming in. Thursday, the chance of storms moves to I-25 and eastward and then away from us on Friday we are in the dry stability. This map always overdoes the mixed precipitation. I don't think they take a look at elevation very closely. So for Wednesday night, they have a little chance basically north of Denver and up in the northeast, west part of the state mixed precipitation, some good snows in north central mountains. It really should be rain at the lower elevations, not a mix. Friday it pulls away to the north and east. Looking at the normals, going from 70 down to 66 is all we expect for high temperatures as we get to the middle of the month. I didn't look it up. It looks like the average first snow for Denver International is around October 19th. I'm just doing that for memory. So the first snow is coming. It's just a couple of weeks away on average, but it's been much later in some years. Friday went down to 37, is the expected low, creeping closer to freezing. We are going to see freezing temperatures this week. I'm going to cover that carefully. Time to get your outdoor stuff like boats and campers ready. If you have a sprinkler system, it's a good time to do it, get them blown out. I'm not going to be able to, but I'm going to put a blanket over the exposed pipes. The underground stuff will be fine. So taking a look at this little storm here, we have a little wrap-up right here. This is our approaching storm here on Wednesday. The deep tropical moisture is way out here. There's that quasi-tropical blob that's going to create the severe chances. In the upper atmosphere, the low is crossing over northern Colorado, and that's what's kind of robbing a lot of people of the moisture. So here's our mountain snows and precipitation on Thursday morning. Not too far south of Longmont or Denver. You're just not going to see much. We do have a shot of cold air behind this. Looking right along I-25, that looks like a little downslope signature, that the air coming off the mountains from the northwest sinks and warms as it does so, as it compresses. So even though it's really cold out here with really getting really chilly and cold mountains, and you can see the sharp cold front heading down like that, maybe we won't be quite so cold until the winds die down. Let's put this in motion. You can see this low rolling over us on Thursday, and then moving on with northwest winds bringing cold air in. The ridge comes back briefly, but we still have northwest flow, so that will keep us cooler. The ridge is building on the western...I really don't want that. Thank you, Adobe. The ridge is building on the west coast, and then the northwest flow brings another low down middle next week, which doesn't look quite as significant. Looking at temperatures, I don't know what that first frame is. Here's the cold air coming down pretty quickly and spreading across the state. You can see the cold front making it down into Texas and off the coast. I send the warmth that's on the western slopes, and the cold is on the eastern side of the Rockies. Then we start warming up. You can see the remaining snow on the mountains keeping it cold in the higher elevations. The middle next week, here comes the little blob for the next cold front, Wednesday, Thursday again, and then off. For moisture, we start with the low wrapping up, bringing a lot of moisture into Wyoming. Then as it pulls away, really dry air comes in behind it. There is lots of moisture out in the western states, and by Monday, Tuesday is a little chance of a storm. Right there it starts to focus and move south, dry air right behind it, and then for a Wednesday, Thursday storm, the moisture comes back again. This is precipitable water through the atmosphere. Surface dew points are, for this time of year, still a bit low. So the lower atmosphere is pretty dry in the upper 30s and 40s, and really dry stuff comes in after that. You can see the dry air pushing all the tropical moisture back into the ocean, and really dry stuff locally. That's good enough for that. So let's take a look at the storm. First comes in is rain, and kind of wraps up giving the mountain snow, and then pulls away Thursday night. Going into next week, pretty dry through the weekend. If you've got any camping or any hiking plans, it'll be beautiful, cold, but beautiful, especially if you go up to the mountains. Here comes that Tuesday ripple. I didn't put chances of showers in. This could be just a model anomaly. Then going into Wednesday Thursday next week, you can see this less significant storm with some more mountain snows coming in. Just taking a look at the southwestern states and seeing the snow add up over the beginning of this next week, just the next few days. It's pretty significant, 10, 15, 11 inches of snow in the higher elevations. And just taking a look at the precipitation there, you can see a little bit Denver, Boulder, Longmont. Again, could be the downslope that's cutting that off because it warms and dries as it sinks off the mountains. But the mountains up here, getting some good precipitation, really significant water north of Cheyenne because the low is just going to throw the stuff up there. Here's our better look at the snow, and 12 inches, and plus in many locations. So there is a winter storm or weather-weather advisory for the mountains. This could be upgraded. I don't know why that's here. So this is from weather 5280. And then looking over the next 10 days, a little more precipitation across the state with those next two ripples and just a touch more snow in the mountains. So we should see the first freeze on Friday. This should end the growing season for the year. It's going to be a hard enough freeze that it should do that. We lose the warmth until next week we see 70s, at least low 70s, but the weekend will be pretty chilly, starting out below freezing and then getting back above freezing. So again, get the stuff outside prepared. Check out Longmont Leader for frequent weather updates when the weather calls for it, and local news. This has been Chief Neuraljust Johninsworth talking for a long time, urging you to keep looking up, and I hope to see you Saturday morning.