 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, January 20th chief meteorologist John Enzworth here for Longmont public media Let's get into it Wednesday, January 20th at the beginning of our forecast window We have our first quarter moon looking very pretty out there very clear skies for Wednesday Look in our drought keeping an eye on this Remember just about a year year and a quarter ago. We had no drought anywhere in the state and now we have Exceptional and extreme drought in many places, but if you take a look in the southeast corner from last week to this week We had enough rain to actually register or maybe it was snow, but we had enough moisture come down to lessen the drought severity in some key agricultural locations Looking nationally Not much has changed from last week to this week, but if you take a look at West Texas a little more rain Sneaks in there and with less rain in Southern, California the drought gets a little worse down there So here we go clicking forward one week Well, not much change, but those two locations Here at home as has been the pattern for most of the winter so far The majority of precipitation has fallen in the mountains. You can see some really small locations with two inches of precipitation, this is melted water equivalent The western part of the state and the eastern half of the state pretty dry including the I-25 Corridor, but the southern mountains and the higher elevations did pretty well The pattern at the beginning of the forecast here is a deep trough down off of the Southern, California coast Which is actually good for them. We had the worsening drought down there So this will bring some moisture into the southwest in Arizona. We got a high over the gulf Not trough over the east coast and looking at the water vapor satellite image You can see that same pattern. There's our low and the little swirl of the moisture Reds are very dry air gray and white Shading is moist. You can see the ridge down here in the gulf We are kind of in between of everything. Nothing really affecting us currently The passing shortwave kicked up enough winds that in a very small strip going down the front range We were expecting on Wednesday up to 100 mile an hour winds and Wind prone areas most places in the 40 to 60 mile per hour area those will extend down to Look at lower speeds with still 20 mile per hour 30 mile per hour winds along I-25 overnight as things change and It should be a little more quiet on Thursday Looking at the 10-day big picture our normal high temperature is level of 44 normal low level at 17 For the next 10 days for the first few days. We are right in the dead center normal We spend Sunday through about Wednesday next week Going at the low end of normal, but still temperatures remaining in that range And then coming out at the end of the next week We get up to the very top of normal, but still normal I mean we can wiggle around inside normal and it's still normal from that somebody to Wednesday period You can see that the ensemble runs are picking up chances of precipitation, but no one day. That's really Wet or snowy So let's put that in motion and see how that shapes out So going into Thursday and Friday. We see a ridge over Colorado here comes a trough Replacing the one that was just off of California coast digging way down again as that passes into Monday We get a little energy here the lift deeper trough comes in for Tuesday into Wednesday It starts to fill But it still passes in the early part of the weekend by Wednesday big ridge settling in Thursday. It's Ridge Friday, it's Ridge and for next weekend. You can see another trough coming in Probably bringing us some more snow and colder weather for next weekend. I'm gonna take a look at the precipitation in the future and Not a lot hits us. Here's Friday into Saturday Definitely the western slopes in Utah do better the eastern side of the Rockies and not much makes it over here Going into Monday and Tuesday. There's showers around but nothing really Concentrated or widespread Going to Wednesday. Here's another shot hitting the mountains, but not the eastern plains We just can't get a break here going to Thursday and Friday. There's the really warm period Here's our next system coming in and it looked impressive in the upper air pattern, but by Saturday It's not much We can watch the temperatures over the next 10 days as well We have abnormal warmth in place at the start of the forecast Saturday is very nice and then Sunday the cold front comes in and we've really chilled out You can see that spread down into Texas and Oklahoma through Monday Tuesday It's a mix some places are above normal until Tuesday Wednesday Most of the region is below normal. Then we come into Thursday and Friday and the heat returns Look at all that above normal temperature This is not a range temperature of normal. This is a single value given And that is kind of the oscillations that we have coming up It's just that weekend early next week period that will be cool and somewhat snowy To illustrate that over the next five days We don't have much along I-25 at all, but the mountains get up to six ten locally twelve inches or more just a few lucky spots Adding that to the next five days Little more snow in the mountains, especially the southern mountains, which definitely need it. So that's great Right along I-25 Over ten day period and it's about a trace to an inch maybe So you probably probably will not be shoveling snow this week over the next Seven days we start at the 50s drop into the 40s Kind of try to get back to close to 50 on Saturday That's the day to go out to do stuff front comes in in the afternoon evening and we get a chance of snow that night and then mix of snow clouds and Sun from Sunday through Tuesday, but pretty chilly temperatures For local news and frequent weather updates check out longmontleader.com This has been chief meteorologist John Enzworth. Keep looking up