 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning of Wednesday, February 3rd. I'm Chief Meteorologist John Anso with Furlough on the public media. We start this forecast week with a moon only in the early morning sky, for a third quarter, heading towards noon next week. And of course, happy Groundhog's Day, just a day or two before this went live. The Groundhog did see its shadow, which, according to local lore, means that we get six more weeks of winter. If you look at the climatology and the meteorology of western Pennsylvania and compare it to the Groundhog's forecast, he's only been right about 30 or 40 times. It'd be better if he just flipped the coin. Let's take a look at the drought index over Colorado for last week to this week and you can see very little has changed. We're just in that pattern, we're cold air, keeps evaporation from doing much at all. We're getting a snowpack up in the mountains, but that hasn't started to melt and replenish the soil below. So we're just waiting to see what spring brings. Certainly west of the Rockies and the divide, things are much better than out here on the plains. Looking nationally, things haven't changed much either. A little worse than drought out here in the west in Great Basin. Looking at the precipitation we did get over the last seven days, we got a little bit. We got that light snow earlier in the week. We have just 10th of an inch, 500ths of an inch out here on the plains. Little bit better amounts, half inch amounts up in the mountains. So the story for the weather this week really is the high amplitude pattern that we have set up now. For a long time it's been a little bit of a ridge, a little bit of a trough, things kind of moving around. Now we've got this monstrous ridge all the way up across much of the hemisphere and corresponding massive trough in the east. And this is what's giving us amazing heat as we go into the beginning of this week. And in the upper air pattern can be seen with the moisture vapor satellite. We have that same bulge in the moisture from the tropics. And if that only would stay around long enough for us to get some snow out of it, it'd be great. But it looks like it's going to get pushed aside and the plains will see more of what we would like. So looking at Wednesday morning, we do have a big storm gathering in the west. We have a cold front sweeping down through the mountains and another one reinforcing cold trout up in Montana. And lots of snow, lots of rain for other people. Looking at the 10-day ensemble, for us we stay really warm up at the top end, a little bit above normal. Normal temperatures are rising at one degree over those 10 days from both lows and highs. And what we're focused on is this big change coming this weekend. We have a little bit of precipitation possible on Wednesday night as the initial front hits. And then we have this unsettled pattern and temperatures going to way below normal at that same time. So that means snow, but how much? So here we are looking at the upper air pattern as we go into the week. This first big trough digs down. There's the weekend cold and snow. We should be down in the 20s maybe lower and near single digits or negative temperatures for Saturday into Sunday. And then the next week we have this cold north-northwest flow across the state. So we'll get another ripple through, another chance of precipitation, but basically cold air coming in. Looking at that cold air, these are above normal temperatures in the pinks and the reds. It's very above normal. Here's below normal with that trough out in the east. And here comes our initial cold front for the weekend. Look at it all the way down to the Gulf Coast scouring out the warmth. Then we get the reinforcing Saturday cold air. That is amazingly cold air. This is far below normal, 20 degrees, 30 degrees below normal. Snow. Looking at the precipitation here, you can see that storm comes in. There's a lot of snow in the northern Rockies. It hits western Colorado, gathers itself out on the plains and is gone. For the weekend we see this little upslope period kick in. It may be a day of snow and then it fades out and is gone. This has been decreasing model run to model run. So it may be a lot of the other storms it underperforms when we finally get there. And looking at what the GFS sees over the next 10 days, it doesn't really give a snow down on the I-25 corridor at all. The mountains, northern mountains get most of it. And for precipitation, again, moisture is up there. We are nearly dry. So it was looking promising earlier, not holding together right now. So over the next seven days we start out with 60s, near record high temperatures. Friday we have the effects of the cold front coming in, not just to the 40s. And then that reinforcing cold shot really kicks us down into amazing cold. So we go from amazing heat to amazing cold with that little bit of precipitation chance over the weekend and next week. Taking a look at the last month and next month of finish today. This was the forecast in December of the temperatures across the nation for January. You can see they were calling for above normal temperatures and near normal precipitation. And that pretty much did pan out for January. But if you take a look in February, they're now calling for below normal temperatures and just a little bit above normal precipitation. So the pattern is certainly setting off to keep that as a good forecast. We'll see if it holds later in February. For frequent weather updates and local news, check out the Longmont Leader at longmontleader.com. I've been Chief Meteorologist John Ensworth. Keep looking out.