 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, January 12th, 2022 I'm Chief Meteorologist John Insworth for Longmont Public Media Monday 17th we have a full moon out there. It's going to be beautiful for walking not too cold because right now we're not getting a lot of cold. Take a look at drought conditions. We have Karau getting better in the mountains last time staying kind of bad on the plains but going to this week have more relief in the mountains. So many of the areas that were in the extreme drought category have backed down to abnormally dry. The snowpack is really tremendous. So nationally going from last week to this week you see more of the west kind of coming out of some of the drought conditions that they've been in and it's just great time that's doing it. Take a look at the snowpack. We've gone from below average two weeks ago to average to above average. So yeah that's great news as well and going to this week it's even higher. So now it's much above average because the plains have finally picked up some snow as well. And there's the precipitation we got. It's a really heavy liquid amount so this is not snow depth. This is liquid melted snow so we're up to five, six inches up here. That's colossal. Areas around Boulder and like that are in the half inch to inch area gave us our five inches or so of snow. I took a look nationally on Wednesday there's a little snow in the Pacific Northwest, heavy rain on the coast, a little bit of snow and lake effect snow up in the Great Lakes and some stuff right down in Florida. And speaking of Florida the only place we have any convection at all, any thunderstorms is right here on the southeast coast on the Keys. For Thursday it's a little bit further southeast and then no thunderstorms at all nationally on Friday. It doesn't mean there won't be some weather because Friday afternoon we do have a vigorous trough coming down with dew north winds plowing down into the state with our ridge on either side. Taking a look at the snow though it's going to be starved for moisture. It's moving so quick that it's not going to get a hold of this good rich tropical gulf moisture. So we have mountain snows over here. We'll look at that more closely in just a moment. So temperature differently plummets with this. We go from above average down to the bottom average for a high in there right in the middle and then temperatures go up into the upper window. The GFS ensemble has a lot of precipitation, good chances for just a little bit there. Scattered stuff later. So the big event is Friday that's our one chance for some good stuff. Let's take a look at it happen. And from Thursday into Friday you see the trough whisking its way down, zipping across the state. Big ridge right behind us, a giant high pressure system off of the southern California coast. It kind of cuts off in the southeast and then they've got a big snowstorm to worry about next week and we just get northwest flow and ridging to our west. A little bit of ripple passing us to the south. Again, temperatures we start way above normal, that's the reds, blues and purples are below normal so you don't have to worry about elevation and things like that. And there comes our cold farm for the end of the week, cold air spreading down and it's out just about as quickly as it came. We got warm air right behind it, mountains have some snow so you got some cold patches remaining back here from Idaho to Colorado. There's another big slowner cold coming down but it slides past us heading for the east. Okay and precipitation wise I'll just go up to this first storm. You see it was Friday, it zips right in there, northern mountains, mountain, central mountains, snow on the plains and then it gathers itself down to the southeast. Now it's ice in here in the pink and heavy snow going up into New England. So for the next five days we have maybe a tenth to a quarter of an inch. Percentation Friday may be only a five-hundredths of an inch. It's low but there's a little bit there. Going to the next ten days it really doesn't change so our cold spot appears there. So beyond this storm we are dry and quiet again looking at the next five days for snow. Stuff for the mountains a little bit possible along 90, 25, four columns and around Palmer Divide and Denver, it's not much. Next ten days a little bit in the southwest but really a little change. So we rock it through in the fifties, low fifties, the bounce of this week. Cold front comes in on Friday giving us, I'm giving a 40% chance of precipitation snow, chilly and dry on Saturday and then we're right back to what we are calling the usual and normal right now, above normal temperatures, partly cloudy skies and little chance of any precipitation. For frequent weather updates and local news, check out Longmont Leader or Broomfield Leader. I need to put that on there.com. This has been Chief Meteorologist John Insworth. Keep up the game.