 Welcome to the weather forecaster of the week, beginning Wednesday, May 26, 2021. This is Chief Meteorologist John Ensworth for Lama Public Media. Going into the new month, we have a third quarter or last quarter moon out there. So you won't see it unless you stay up kind of late at night, it rises at 2 a.m. Let's check on our improving drought conditions, at least on this side of the Rocky Mountains. As you can see last week, we had complete relief from the drought in northeastern, north-central Colorado, and things weren't horribly bad down on the plains. Going to this week, we've seen everything east of the plains of the Rockies definitely improve. We still desperately need water on the western slopes, and so we are behind in that. We'll keep an eye on that and see if we can get some relief out there. Looking nationally, not much changes except this corridor from Texas up into Wyoming. As we go from last week to this week, you see that the moisture from the gulf is definitely making an impact on soil moisture along that part of the nation. And this is why. Here's the rainfall for the last seven days, and look some spots out here. I think it's just inside of Kansas. It's five to eight inches of rain. We have widespread two, three inches, even four or five inch areas down here in our Pueblo. Amazing, but just like the shoreline of a huge beach, the moisture isn't going any further west than the mountains themselves. Taking a look at the national map for Wednesday, we have high pressure in place at the surface, nearby weakness and low pressure north of us, plenty of moisture out on the plains. So get a little bit of activity in northeastern Colorado. The Storm Prediction Center has a marginal risk almost down to Longmont, kind of down to the Loveland birthed area in northeast. Then you have a slight risk in the extreme corner, and out here in Nebraska, Kansas, an enhanced risk of severe weather. Tornadoes will be possible out here on the plains, but this is spring and this is the great plains, so that's what happens. Taking a look at that hail risk, there's the highest risk of hail. We have some risk of hail not far away to the northeast, and that could, if the moisture goes further west, impact high 25 in Colorado. At the moment, it doesn't look like it's quite there, and then looking at the tornado risk, pardon me a second, that's out here in the northeast corner too, with a 5% chance in Colorado, but just way up here in the corner of tornado within 25 miles of any given point. That's how these maps are figured. Green areas, 2% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of someone in that green area. Looking at the last week of May, the overall chance of severe weather bulls-eyes in Oklahoma, and up into Kansas and Texas, that's completely normal. On a scale of 1 to 8, this is the historical probability of severe weather, the percent chance. We are in the 3 to 2 border percent chance. This is not quite our peak. It gets a little worse going into June. It would be a lot of hail in June especially, so we'll keep an eye on that as we go into that month. Looking at Friday AM, we have our warmest day then. We have a ridge stretching up through the mountains and up into Canada, with a little short wave over here, and the next deepening trough on the west coast. Over the next 10 days, the normal high temperature rises from 75 to 78. That's really getting warm now. Normal low temperature is 45 to 49, and the record lows are staying really close to the freezing mark. That's certainly time to turn the sprinklers on if you are concerned about your lawn. Mine has plenty of water, and as you see out here, starting mid-weekend and in next week, our chances of rain are back again. So if you want to save that water bill, I'm going to leave this things off and maybe into June sometime. We'll see when it really does dry out and get hot. But in the meantime, we have mostly dry conditions, a little chance of afternoon thunderstorms most of days, and even when the moisture returns, you can see this increase in the afternoons. So that's our afternoon thunderstorm chances with the heating of the day. So by Monday, this is the reverse in the pattern instead of a ridge up through this part of the nation. We now have almost a cut-off low, got a deep trough going off the Baja into the Pacific. This is bringing the moisture back up, and this is also bringing the cool air in the loft that destabilizes the atmosphere. So this is where the rain chances really do begin. So let's take a look at the next 10 days and see this in motion. Looking Thursday into Friday, a little short way goes by, little chance of those storms. We have the ridge for the heat of Friday. Going into Saturday, still a ridge, and then into Sunday the trough really starts to influence us. Going into Monday, Monday noon, the trough kind of stays out here. It kind of gets reinforced into Wednesday. It's just starting to pass, and a ridge is beginning to push in to the west. So the end of this next week looks like the end of this week. Looking at our moisture at this time of year, that's where we're interested in. There is always a nearby supply of moisture. Even when this gets pushed away, you'll see it recovers pretty quickly east of the mountains. And by Sunday into Monday, we have deep moisture amounts along the plains, along the front range. Going into Tuesday and even Wednesday, the entire state has a good amount of atmospheric moisture for the most part. And then into the end of next week, that ridge comes in with a lot of Pacific moisture. So we don't really get much of a dry out except in the short term. Looking at storms, of course these are random, and they can pop up as they wish. There's our first batch moving out with severe weather. And going into Friday, we're pretty dry, but there's still a few storms that pop up someplace along the mountains in the afternoon. There's our Sunday storms. We've got a low here. There's going into Monday, the storms reform. We've got another batch in the mountains and heading out on Tuesday. And then Wednesday, it's kind of focused in southern Colorado. So yeah, keep an eye on the western sky for storms just about every day, especially into the weekend and into the beginning of next week. Trying to get an idea of how much moisture we can expect and where over the next five days, everything is out on the plains, east of the continental divide. During the next 10 days, there's some relief over there, Grand Junction Sting, dry, but during go get some moisture we may get. And this will be a random pattern, but we'll get some deep moisture in a few places east of the mountains. So over the next week, we flirt around with 80 degree temperatures through Friday. We cool off through the weekend and into next week with sixties and then 50 for highs and then return to good storm chances, mainly in the afternoon and early evening. Before we go, let's take a look at some climatology here. We're at the end of a month in the beginning of a new month. So May's outlook for temperatures had us abnormally warm and it turned out that we were normal to a little bit below normal for temperatures. Looking at the June outlook, they have us in the highest higher category of above normal chance of above normal temperatures. So we'll see if that comes out that way. The May outlook for precipitation was normal amounts and we turned out very wet. Channel 7 this morning said that Denver is five inches above normal for precipitation this time of year. So that's extremely significant and that was not captured in the May outlook. Okay, the June outlook, they have us below normal. So we'll see what happens when we grade it in the month. Another thing to look at before we go is the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the El Nino signal for the last year plus two years. We've been basically in what's called a La Nina phase where the eastern Pacific is abnormally cool and that tends to dry us out and we indeed have gone from being completely drought free a few years ago to having pretty significant drought. Now the forecast is for it to go back to a neutral phase, neither El Nino nor La Nina and so you'd expect more of a normal weather pattern and that would probably allow more moisture to stick around for much of the remainder of the summer and into the fall and maybe in the long term we can see a more drought relief. For local news and frequent weather updates check out the Longmont Leader at LongmontLeader.com. I've been Chief Muir, I'll just John Ensworth. Keep looking up!