 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, April 27th, 2022. I'm Chief Meteorologist John Innsworth for Longmont Public Media. We are leaving another month behind. It's already April 30th. We'll have our new moon, so there won't be anything to see again. Looking at drought conditions, we were in abnormally dry. As you've noticed, nothing really has fallen out of the sky in so long. I can hardly remember what it's like. And so drought has gotten a little worse right here. I-25, including Broomfield and Longmont and Boulder, and like that. Well, maybe not Boulder. Boulder is still on that edge. Looking nationally, things are getting a little worse on the Great Plains here, too. A little bit in the west, not a lot of change. Things change more dramatically as temperatures rise because of the low relative humidities that temperature causes. Looking at our snowpack, I don't know how much longer. This will be a useful thing to include, but we can take a look at the sequence marching up to the present time. You can say we are now at 81% of median. So yeah, we're past peak snow time. April's pretty darn snowy, if not the snowiest month, and we've gone almost nothing. So we stayed below normal after being promising early start, hovering near 100% for the early part of the season, but temperatures are up and precipitation is down. Taking a look at this precipitation, you can see a long I-25 bone drive last seven days. Mountains do keep getting water, so that's very good news. We need it up there, keep the forest moist. But because of that, those places where we have fires now, these are the forecasts for Friday morning. So the fires are actually back down here in the afternoon, as long as the humidity goes down, temperatures go up, you get a burst of burning activity, and then that plume travels along. So by Friday morning, the smoke is becoming kind of moderate. It's not horrendous, but it's definitely noticeable. I couldn't even smell some yesterday. Looking at severe weather, the probability of severe weather expands as we go into spring for the fourth week of April. We now have a 1% chance of severe weather within 25 miles climatologically, you can see the amazing bullseye in Oklahoma, Texas, and southern Kansas. So yeah, what we really are going to have over the next, I have four days here, a chance of thunder on Wednesday. Thunder to the northeast corner of us with marginal and slight risk up here. And that moves out on the plains, hitting that bullseye spot almost like it's climatology. And then that moves up into quite the Ohio River, guys, upper Mississippi Valley for Saturday. Taking a look at our progression of weather systems. We have a front draped up here and across the north, an over front that's made it down to the Gulf, bringing Florida some showers and like that. For Thursday, there's our storms focused on that front, just to our northeast. Just don't get it right back here in Longmont Denver area. Looking the next day for Friday, there's our severe weather out on the plains. We have heavy rain up here, a little bit of mountain snow and snow mix up here, but again right around I-25, nothing. This is a critical fire weather down here where there already are fires. For Saturday, cold front blast through, it cools us down and leaves us again dry. So over the next 10 days, our normal high goes from 65 to 68. Night time temperatures 36 to 40. We have this cool down for the weekend, but still it's within normal. So nothing really to complain about there. We are not seeing excessive heat. We have little chances of showers now and then. You'll see Tuesday a little better chance here and maybe some scatter next week. But in case I haven't said it recently, this is an ensemble. So they have multiple runs of precipitation for each six hour period, where things are a little bit different in the model and they look to see how robust the rain signal is. So the more green you get lined up, the more confident we are that we'll get some showers. Again, that's half a week out or almost a week out, so that lowers confidence. Looking at the notable storm passages over the next week, Friday noon, we have this one that's going to bring in a lot of wind. Not a lot of precipitation, but when the lines are close together in the upper map here, the winds are strong. And these little barbs in here and flags show 50, 55, 60, 70, not winds. Looking at the surface, we have a low forming over here near Colby or Burlington and the lines are close together again, especially right along the mountains here. We have some mountain snow, but nothing on the plains. So winds across the state Friday, noon to Friday evening are going to be very high and we're going to see gusts. So these are sustained winds of 20s, 30s. So you can see gusts up to half again more to twice that, if it's possible. So batting everything down for Friday, watch that fire danger. Again, I'm sure the BVF, fire warnings up again. We have to go all the way out to Sunday, Monday, the next week for this next trough. And there's a little scattering of showers, some severe weather down in Oklahoma and Texas again, way back. I'm sorry, that was Saturday. I guess, yes, back it up. Sunday, Monday, midnight is this system with a little chance of showers and severe weather down south. Now for next Friday, PM, another trough coming in, a little short wave ridge pulling out and pretty much rain. And even the mountains, temperatures will be so warm that let me see if I can even find those. The temperatures below freezing are way up here in Canada. The whole nation is warm at this point. So I'll just put this in motion. You can see Thursday into Friday, here comes our wind producing, hopefully not fire making or spreading winds. And that becomes a little bowling ball out on the planes and drifts up northward. Next trough comes in for Sunday, Monday. And then there's one rocking down from Tuesday. This might give us a Tuesday chance of showers. Again, none of these are really impressive. For next Thursday, Friday, there comes that big trough kind of digging in sideways. The temperatures here, I'm not going to play too much of this because it's sort of a mishmash. The overall pattern is that we have heat. And then the cool, there comes the cold front for Friday with the winds. And then we just kind of stay in this boundary. There's cool to our east, warm in the southwest. And it kind of sloshes back and forth a little bit. You can see it's another cold front coming in for Tuesday. But it's passed really quickly. We'll definitely notice a cool bound on Tuesday, Wednesday. All right. And for showers, there's our Thursday, Friday pulling out. There's Friday. There's a lot going up. There's the severe weather up in Nebraska. Then we go into Saturday. And we're high and dry. If a button a little cool, freezing temperatures are way up here in Canada. For our Tuesday, here comes our net system there. And it just, again, stays pretty far to the north of us. So I'm not too excited. The GFS is more excited in the ensemble about the precipitation chances than the GFS operational model is here. And then we have a Friday, Saturday, next week, even maybe a thunderstorm or two. But that's so far out that we can just hope. For the next five days, very light chances of precipitation, along I-25. Nothing out on the northeast plains in that spot. For snow, it's higher elevations, only getting it. For the next 10 days, scooping in those other small chances, maybe get a quarter inch. I think that's probably overdone, I'm afraid. The forecaster rule of thumb is, when in drought, leave it out when we're talking about precipitation. And those are snow chances, again, high elevations only. But there's six-inch amounts in here. So for Wednesday into Thursday, we warm up to about 80. Friday, we cool down with wind. Saturday and Sunday, hover around 70. And that kind of is the story in a Monday and Tuesday, when, at least Sunday and Tuesday, some chances of showers return. I can just get this turned around and get the land or moisten up, so it'll be easier to get rain beyond that. We have a new month coming in, so we have the May Outlook. Now, we're looking at what the temperatures actually have been since January. Most of the nation's average below normal. And every time we've talked about the outlook, we've had it above normal for the West. So, yeah, I wouldn't put a lot of confidence in it. It's not the heat that we are currently working with. We are working with the drought. So, dry conditions, they expect, with some precipitation coming down up into the Southwestern states like that. So we'll see. That forecast has at least been pretty spot on. For more frequent weather updates and local news, check out LongmontLeader and BroomfieldLeader.com. This has been your weather forecast. I'm Chief Meteorologist John Insworth. Keep looking up.