 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning, Wednesday, June 14th, 2023. This is Chief Meteorologist John Innsworth for Longmont Public Media, and I thought I'd mix it up a little bit this time and record outside next to the observatory, so behind you is the Cherrywood Observatory. Saturday June 17th is a new moon, so nothing to see there, and the sunspots right now are not pointing directly at Earth. At least not many of them, so it's kind of quiet on the surface of the sun. Speaking of summer, the first day of summer is Wednesday, June 21st, this year, 8.58am is the exact moment of the Inquinox. Looking at drought conditions, things just keep getting better. We have lost more of the drought out here, we just have a little bit on the plains just down here in the southeast corner, but not much. Speaking nationally, we've also seen a lot of improvement in Oklahoma, Texas Panhandle part of the nation, and everything else is doing pretty well, so that's good. Of course, smoke has been making the news, especially in the east coast. We have fires up in this part of Canada and fires in the northeast or eastern part of Canada, and just over the last couple of days some of the smoke has been wrapping back around and reaching Colorado. But Southwest winds, we're going to look at in just a moment, are heading in to push that back up to the Great Lakes and northern plains. Let's do our animation of Snowpack, and it's above, much above remember, and then as we seasonally go back down to no snow, we're still above normal. The cool temperatures and the copious amounts of precipitation have given a higher peaks of bump in snow, so we're still above normal as we enter summer. We'll probably look at this one more time, and then we will be in summer. Okay, precipitation, this is just shocking. Look at this, reds to purples are 6'8", and even above 10 inches of precipitation to the southeast of Denver, not on the plains. Western slopes, kind of missing it, but they are getting at least a little bit of moisture, and they're great snowpack, put them ahead for the year hydrologically, so they're doing still okay, even without precipitation happening out there, but the front range and I-25 corridor is just amazing. Okay, take a look at the animation of severe weather climatology. We have pretty much a peak right now. This is going to be our greatest chance of severe weather, and we've been having a lot of hail, there's, I guess, just about every roof south of Loveland, and even into Denver. This is going to have to be replaced in the next couple of years. We wouldn't do it yet, so don't, you don't get the roofers up there yet, because we still are in the middle of it. Speaking of severe weather, we have just a chance of convection on Wednesday. A big tornado outbreak is likely down here in the southeast. That inches back towards us, as always, they're kind of conservative, so the, when the day arrives, when it arrives, this could be drawn a little bit further to the west and north, and Friday, it's nearby. Colorado Springs, not up to Denver, but that could change when we get to Friday. We're getting some breezes here, hopefully that's not picking up on the mic. Looking at the surface map, you can still see a mix of snow and rain at the higher elevations. This is Wednesday, kind of dry on the plains for Wednesday. But then everything is getting storms again on Thursday with mountain snows. And then Friday, very similar, Friday should be quite wet. We'll take a look at that in just seconds. Here is our normal temperature on the ensemble, going from 82 up to 85. We are definitely heading into summer. 52 to 56 is the normal low temperature, so we're just feeling great if you go out and camp. It was dry on Wednesday, increasing chances on Thursday. And Friday started a, we get a dry spell in the early part of next week, and temperatures get up towards normal, but not that high, well, maybe one day. And then afternoon thunderstorms return later next week. So looking at the water vapor satellite image, we do have a trough coming in the west coast and a flow of moisture of the Pacific here. We still have some moisture coming in at the mid to low levels from the plains. It's kind of cut off right there. I'm taking a look at Thursday noon. We have this ridge to our east, and the first of a couple troughs are starting to come across the state. Moisture increases, and we get widespread thunderstorms Thursday into Friday. That all changes very abruptly on Sunday with a ridge coming back over the state. And let's take a look at that in motion. That's going to really heat us up very fast. So Thursday into Friday, you can see a complex trough kind of getting together and then moving past. This wind does turn out to be a problem. I won't do this outside again, but there's our ridge for the end of the weekend beginning of next week. And there's a big trough coming into the northeast or northwest, but we have southwest flow aloft bringing desert dry, hot air to our direction. That kind of goes up through the northern tier states in Canada, and we get a ridge back with some moisture that will be coming in. So let's take a look at the cool air in place now. It sloshes off. We've got rain-cooled air and thunderstorms embedded in there. Again, a little cool front, but we've got a lot of precipitation cooling on Friday into Saturday, and then that blob moves off. And even with the northwest trough coming in, we warm up pretty quickly in the above normal temperatures at the beginning of next week. Those are southwest flow, lots of cool air out in the west, but we stay warm until the end of next week when cool air comes through and some moisture returns. There's afternoon thunderstorms right there. So let's look at this moisture flow. This is moisture up in the atmosphere, precipitable water. It really is above normal through the end of this week, fueling all the rain and thunderstorms that we'll be getting. Then to Sunday, seeing dry air coming in, especially at east of the Rockies, there's a lot of dry air for the early part of next week, and then we try to get some monsoon type moisture coming in, a little bit of gulf moisture out on the plains. Not really getting here until later in the week. This is a surface moisture now, and right now we've got 40s and 50s for dew points that's very high for Colorado still, so that's our surface fuel for the thunderstorms and rain. The dry air is lurking down here in Arizona, and we get into Monday and it starts to spread up into the state. We've dropped to the 20s and 30s for dew point values, so still lots of moisture not far away on the plains, and that's going to help then get rain and thunderstorms and maybe get rid of that drought problem there. I've got extremely dry air. We've got dew points down around single digits, so you have to go far below freezing to get any moisture to form out of the air on something. I'm going to take a look at the precipitation and move in again quickly on Thursday. We've got mountain thunderstorms moving on on the plains, then Saturday or another round, maybe a little more central-southern Colorado, and then coming into Sunday we dry out. There goes the big truck. Sorry about that. Ah, that's what you get for filming on location. Okay, so over the next five days, there's a strange cutoff of precipitation right here on the New Mexico border, going out 10 days. Still lots of moisture for all of the state, including the western slopes. So 80s for Wednesday, dropping down to pretty cool, chilly, wet, high chances for precipitation on Friday. Oh boy. Being on location is not the best. All right, and then we're still kind of cool on Saturday with chances of storms. Things dry out and warm up quickly next week. Mountain Mount Leader and Broomfield Leader, great local sources of news, and frequent weather updates. This has been your weather forecast. I'm Chief Neal of just John Innsworth. Keep looking up.