 This is your weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday March 10th, 2021. I'm Chief Meteorologist John Ensworth Once again recording from a remote location as I'm getting ready for spring break and yes I'm going to try to get into a car and drive out of the state before this place becomes buried But be first we've got the oh, sorry new moon. I'm not gonna go back and fix that Saturday March 13th Looking quickly at our drought conditions from last week to this week definitely some relief in the front range area and Boulder County and down towards Western Denver We're about to get a lot more water though. This is gonna be great news at least for the northern half of the state Going forward looking nationally you can see the Lessening of drought a little bit in the mountains especially Colorado and a little bit of the northern Rockies not much But it's all an improvement things are not getting worse. So The precipitation we got over the last seven days I'm a half a inch amounts a few local one inch amounts, but light stuff overall Well, the big story is that low sitting off of northern California coast trough down south of it and a general Deepening trough over the entire Western US. You can see there's a mini ridge over Utah, Arizona But it's just sort of a response of troughs on both sides little sprinkles and showers that we received Wednesday and Tuesday is that little ripple going through Kansas in Nebraska Giant ridge on these coasts is giving them near record heat and even fire conditions You can see this same pattern in the water vapor satellite image the reds as I always explained are Very dry air through the entire atmospheric column where Gray's and whites are moist Air and the pinks and the blues are usually high clouds or extremely cold air Like we saw with the polar vortex, but there's the low We don't have one of those right now at all, but there's the big low that's cutting off on the west coast funneling moisture around and into the western states the storm begins really Friday morning is the low now rolls down into the Las Vegas area and Showers begin to pick up all around it I missed one on Saturday evening the storm is at its maximum. You can see the upper level patterns is the 500 millibar Heights and they are very depressed like a bowl right here in the atmosphere Inside of this big ridge, so that's why it's cut off. It's not going very quickly with the jet stream flow And it is in a really good location Just a pump moisture up around you can see there's a vorticity maximum That's this red coloration that says the atmosphere wants to Rotate in the direction that allows air to rise which that with upslope means Maximum snow rates pretty much and that's what we are expecting here's the surface precipitation Future map at that same time for Saturday evening. You can see the yellows here Really strong conviction you get the thunderstorms there and right here on the edge There's longmont and the front range and I-25 the darkest blues and those even thunderstorm Coloration there so this is just going to go crazy and one of the Expressions that we have in the weather community is that if you really want the heaviest snow you've got a smell rain It's got to be warm enough close by that You can get that much moisture still in the atmosphere remember when we had temperatures down at 10 below and like that We didn't get a lot of snow the Those temperatures don't support the water vapor that you need All right, then's ensembles one that we've never seen the likes of in this show Again the ensemble here runs a the GFS model multiple times with variations and stacks them up Vertically, so you have runs one through 30 here and the blues and light blues are snow and heavy snow and if they all have precipitation falling And all different all 30 different runs you have a high confidence that that's happening and pretty much That's what's picking up Thursday into Friday and then quite abruptly Friday night things just go crazy For a few days all the way to Monday morning In fact, there's a winter storm watch that I'm sure will be upgraded to a warning the next day or so for much of the front range and I-25 Communities on Denver and north and south so Well I'm just gonna let these mistakes go because I've got to get this out onto the air as quickly as I can The normal high temperature goes from 53 to 56 over the next 10 days Lowest from 25 to 29. We're definitely heading towards spring You can see the temperatures bounce around in normal until Saturday and then beyond we stay down Hovering around the normal low temperature for this time of year All right, let's put this in motion and watch this big thing roll now since it's not being driven Directly by the jet stream. It does tend to wobble around and take its time, but there it is going to ride over southeastern Colorado before it go ejects into Kansas and Nebraska Then by Monday Tuesday another one is coming down in its path a little further south in this model run But that's what keeps the unsettled where they're going All the way into Tuesday next week Taking a look at temperatures for fun. You can see the cold front pushing right through here and cool air coming in There's the cool air associated with the cutoff low. It's not super cold. There isn't a lot of cold cold air In fact temperatures will probably rise just above freezing almost every day But it that's what you need for the heaviest snow the snows it falls some of it will evaporate and that will cool the air locally They're looking at the surface. This is the In motion maps that will include the one frame that we had earlier here comes it low out of The southwest and there it is over southeast Colorado and for a good day and a half just pumping maximum amounts of precipitation up into the next week here comes that next low and Snow spreads up and cross the eastern plains and mountains again. So it's a double hit basically So I'm taking the GFS and I'm taking slices Moving forward so for the next two days from Wednesday forward just getting us into Friday afternoon We have a Little bit of snow not much at first going one more day forward though things go crazy This is 18 to 20 inches 22 inches of snow just up the hill from Boulder Including Fort Collins, especially the western side of Fort Collins and most of Larimer Boulder County and Western Denver really hit When we go six days out we scoop up the rest of the weekend snow and then the next hit and I gotta say these just look unrealistic to me. Maybe this will Come together at 60 inches of snow from Boulder to Red Feather Lakes and up Right around Longmont We're in the definitely above two feet room of 30 to 40 inch area That's not what other models are calling for it. This is really going crazy I'll take a look at some of those. So here's the Canadian model and It different as a bullseye here around Longmont and up to Fort Collins up to Red Feather Lakes You're in the 20 to 25 27 inch snow area Which does show up in a lot of the other model runs Look at these amounts up here in Nebraska, Wyoming got 40 inches up here So this model could be going a little crazy up in that area The North America model only goes out three and a half days and at the time of recording This is the most recent I could grab and so it gets you just into the Our weekend some and it's got five to seven inches around here right up the hill from Boulder You're definitely in the one foot two locally 18 inches or so 16 inches heavier stuff out here. So That doesn't bring it all in we have to wait for another day and have two days to See what it says kind of grab this one just as the snows beginning So for the week we start dropping Temperatures going down into the 30s, but look notice it's just it's not going below We do rise at least briefly above freezing every day of the storm That time temperatures in the 20s and eventually teens later in the storm For frequent weather updates and I will keep an eye on everything Check the Longmont leader and you also get local news and Stories about what this storm is doing to Longmont and the vicinity This has been your weather forecast for the week beginning March 10th on chief meteorologist John insworth keep looking up and get a shovel