 Welcome to your weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday August 19th 2020 I'm chief meteorologist John insworth for Longmont public media at the end of this Video forecast period. We have the first quarter moon coming around It'll be up in the sky in the evening great for going out with binoculars or just taking a walk It's gonna be very picturesque Rising just after noon sitting just before midnight Keeping an eye on the drought. Here's our homemade quasi animation of the drought conditions from June all the way to the present week So we stared out this period in June with no drought in northern countries And some pretty extreme drought down in the southern counties as we move forward into July And now into August and here we are at the present time We've seen some of the areas down in the southern counties actually get some water from from the storms Traveling along it's been more tropical moisture in the southern part of the state But drought conditions are all worse in the west and got a little worse in the northern counties how much Drought we have nationwide on this big outline area. Here's where we have long-term drought on the inside there and there and there That's where the water deficit is starting to affect soil moisture and aquifers Maybe even reservoir storage and like that other places the nation is sort of a short-term Vegetation and crop related water deficit So we're pretty much in that long-term drought settling in Just by year and a half go ahead no drought at all Looking at the rain for the last seven days right along I-25 bone dry Bone dry in the West we know that well out on the far eastern plains in Kansas and Spotty stuff in the southern counties as for the rain did occur, but yeah, we need more rain But I've got some good news. So hang on over the next 10 days the temperature Normal high temperatures drop a couple degrees normal light night time temperatures drop about a degree You can see in the ensemble down here that there are some days where the model Consistently things will be enough thunderstorms traveling around that we get hit. So there's there's some chances here They're not big and they're They're there but the other news is Very high temperatures the high highs are way above normal throughout the entire period and the lows are way above normal throughout this So we're definitely in a summer heat wave pattern So much so that we're setting records probably on Saturday Tuesday we hit 58 days at with 90 degree Fahrenheit or higher for a high temperature the record was 73 days back in 2012 not so long ago and If we do hit 90 plus, which we should every day a few Saturday, then we will be In second place for a hot summer. I was 61 days set in 2005 will be 61 Can we add another 11 days of 90 plus beyond that? It's not impossible It's unlikely climatology is going to be getting harder and harder as we get into September to hold on to the heat But it could happen All right, let's look at moisture. We definitely need some in the state. This is the Water vapor satellite image so greys and whites are Moist air and the reds and browns are dry sinking air When we could go we have Large amount of dry air in the west and up in the plains a little bit lingering around us But not much look at the change one week later the Western US and the Pacific has moistened up tremendously things in large part to to the Capital systems have been drifting by and dying over here so some moisture has made it around into the state and We have some thunderstorm activity this return in the middle of this week The Tuesday a.m. We had the high center right over here in Utah near Las Vegas giant ridge up here big trough from the east north winds Which are normally cool astound probably make it hard to get out of the 80s except this is such an unprecedented large high pressure system is just so much air piled up and sinking compressing that It's keeping us in the 90s, you know, hi 90s Looking at that abnormal heat. This is the surface temperature anomaly. So reds and pinks are Above normal blues are below normal. The white is normal. It's not much normal I go straight from heat to cool and we are Definitely the Quatches of this high pressure in the West with high temperatures above normal By Wednesday noon got a hurricane genadieve Drifting onto the frame here lots of moisture coming up and around the Rockies into, Colorado and Of the next 14 days we can watch this process go on it comes genadieve drifting up You can see the weekend we dry out a little bit, but then genadieve dies off of the California coast See all this moisture streaming in Into the West really good amount of moisture by the 27th 28 There's a big blob coming off for the 29th another tropical system down here Drifting off and dying a front pushing down the planes Bringing in more moisture here Let's take a look again the same loop look down this time into the southern Gulf of Mexico and you'll see another tropical system that's not named yet coming in and Hitting right around the Houston area. There's a cold front pushing down Let's see a dry air and watch this moisture as it goes west then into Mexico Western, Texas, New Mexico and joins that blob of medical brass. So that's September 1st 2nd, right there at the end So things will moisten up. That's good news. There's genadieve forecasted to head up the south the Baja coast and Fizzle out and die over the cooler waters after the weekend For Wednesday with this big high you can even see the shape of the air flow around the high There's enough heat enough moisture that we might get thunderstorms that have damaging gusty winds It's thunderstorms with gusty winds and lightning at this time if this the state is dry as it is It's just not good But they do have that marginal risk for Wednesday and again on Thursday for the entire Eastern half Eastern two-thirds of the state So hail as possible It's not as likely as just a lot of rain lightning The other big news item was smoke So from Tuesday p.m. We have the pine Gulch fire Cameron peak fire Williams folk fire Grizzly Creek fire all burning in the western northern parts of the state and the smoke is just circling around the high here Got five fires down in the Southwest we got fires in Northern California something smoke around this is maybe Lightning up the smoke load a little bit with the very northerly winds, but there's other smoke coming around anyways so we are Doing a smoking heat. It was Wednesday morning. I think this continues to cycle around There's Wednesday late morning, and it's pretty thick. I don't know Plains again By Friday noon not much has changed There's the trough in the Midwest the ridge over the mountains north winds over us Genevieve was drifted a little bit further along So with that moisture, we do have some chance of showers The GFS is giving us 500s of an inch or so Some of the areas in the foothills won't call our springs and southern mountains Maybe get a little bit more. It seems to be seeing one bit thunderstorm right there By Sunday noon the high pressure system actually drifts up this should Coupled with a less moisture for a bit and the sinking motion in the high should take temperatures Healy close to 100 in the lower elevations shut off the thunderstorm activity almost entirely and Just bake us so it's a very hot dry smoky weekend with the smoke just going around in a circle There's Sunday noon even with north northeast winds and cool air out here You'd expect that to be able to come back to us, but the high is so strong It just is a big blob of heat coming around with the Dakotas in Nebraska Keeping us in its clutches still all right, so some chance of relief is Visible in the distance here's August 28th next Friday. I have a trough coming into the northern Rockies South West West winds This is a total shift so a smoker will change and a lot of it will get shunted away more quickly And with that we get a lot of cool air into the northern Rockies and Maybe a little bit of a temperature break next Friday We can go further out to Tuesday September 1st We see evidence of a cold front that actually comes down and takes us to below normal temperatures That might look like low 80s Gosh, even say upper 70s. Oh, I won't but it will feel good and There'll be some relief for the firefighters as well So hang in there a couple more weeks For the next seven days we see temperatures remaining in the 70s or the weekend upper to mid 70s Next week a little bit of a cool down and a bit of moisture coming back again For more local news take a look at Longmont leader calm I have frequent weather right dates on my column there So you can always fill in the gaps between these early week video releases This has been chief meteorologist John Elizabeth for Longmont public media. Keep looking up