 This is where the forecast for the week beginning Wednesday August 5th. I'm chief meteorologist John Innsworth along my public media At point parts unknown today, so you don't get to see my face This week we have the last quarter moon coming on Tuesday You won't see it in the evening sky at all rising at midnight Take a look at our drought roundup Take a look at the last month in the evolution of the low water conditions across the state going back to June 25th We have pretty severe drought in the southern counties Nothing bad in the northern counties and as we move forward week by week You can see drought conditions are getting a little worse across the northern parts of the state Persistent training thunderstorms have caused some relief down here south of Colorado Springs We're on Pueblo and down in the southwestern part of the state looking at the nation as a whole the Region of worsening drought are the western and southwest states from west Texas up through Colorado up into Washington in Oregon Rainfall for the last week since we last met You can see from Fort Collins down to the Longmont about a half inch to an inch in the mountains up above Some places got a lucky two to three inches the same above Castle Rock in the higher foothills The picture this week is that we are transitioning out of a monsoon thunderstorm pattern and back into some good solid dry summer and through the Moisture in the middle levels of the atmosphere coming from the Gulf primarily some from the tropics down around Baja are Having to make a longer and longer trip to get to Colorado at the surface. We still have a really good set of moisture Crawling up towards the west you can see the dry air that will then could be moving its way this is the surface Wind flow this is showing the fetch of moisture from the Gulf cross, Texas Oklahoma and right into eastern Plains of Colorado And looking aloft. This is the ridge in the west. This is going to be slowly moving Eastward and still see how the moisture is able to get around the high-pressure center around El Paso And at the surface we have the moisture flow coming in Those combined are giving us a marginal risk of severe weather in the higher mountains and a slight risk right down I-25 and across all of eastern Colorado Rainfall though according to the GFS over the next day pretty minimal this particular one with big thunderstorm over the Castle Rock and Palmer divide area and around Fort Collins and the hills above get a little extra rain But most of the state is missing out Wednesday the situation is still set up the same. We get the moisture at the surface We have a trough out west on the other side of the ridge and that is giving us our marginal Risk right down to I-25 and the slight risk in northeast Colorado that primary Threat of severe weather will be large hail especially in the slight risk area and Damaging thunderstorm winds they out will be pretty widely scattered We also have smoke to deal with there are some fires now Southern California and down into Mexico and a little bit of fire activity in northeast Arizona all that's putting Smoke and particulate up into the Western Ridge Circulating around with that high-pressure center down in in Mexico Over the next five days the rainfall is all confined to areas east of the continental divide Looking out 10 days you can see our Normal high temperature line here. We we shave off one more degree of Normal high and the thing with the low and the temperatures are definitely skewed to be above average for most of the time period and looking at the ensemble Precipitation It's not much. There's maybe 10 days out. It's just to see some Power activity, but there isn't much once we get past Wednesday Reason it gets so dry is that the high pressure system here over Texas It's now grown and you can see the ridge goes up into the Great Lakes And then there's a lobe of the ridge going out towards California the moisture at the mid levels Need to get these go all the way across and up crossed Arizona there and The surface moisture is now being transferred off into Kansas and beyond So we are left high and dry with a big ridge with gently thinking air and warming to above normal temperatures There's the surface moisture flow for the weekend Looking out the next five days. We start off really normal with pretty good thunderstorm chances on Wednesday And then the dry-out hits and we get up almost to 100 degrees on Friday Saturday Not too far away. We see a little cool down in the distant next week For more local news take a look at the longmont leader calm and for frequent weather updates I post there very regularly long about leader calm This has been John endsworth chief meteorologist for Longmont public media. Keep looking up