 Welcome to the weather forecast for Longmont, Colorado and surrounding areas for the week beginning Wednesday, May 6th I'm chief meteorologist John and it's worth that long month public media the moon This week will be full going into the weekend will be passing full It'll be up most of the night giving you some good light for some walks and like that. We went to the holiday twin Drive-in theater last weekend for its opening night So you'll have some moonlight to contend with if you do catch a drive-in. It was a fun experience. It was nice to get out We were fighting rain showers this last weekend the Two big days of rain together added up to about a half inch of rain around Longmont like the forecast hinted at last week The rainfall was really a northern county's northeast colorado Wyoming Kansas event Southern colorado got missed out entirely but some of these areas the dark greens here are an inch and a half Yellows are two inches and more Right to give you this story for the weather this week We're going to go back before this recording to early Tuesday morning Monday night And we have a big ridge out in the west we have a trough out here off the east coast and some weakness and troughiness in the northern plains This is going to become a bigger part of the story To Cover again what this map is these black lines are the 500 millibar map lines or height Sorry And that means when you go from sea level up to space you're going from full Sea level pressure at about thousand millibars a little bit more up to zero at space So this is about halfway up in the atmosphere They uh ignores mountains. It ignores everything else. It just gives you a nice idea of where there's more air and less air warmer air and colder air in the troughs colder warmer in the ridges generally And the airflow is parallel to these black lines So going west to east you can see it's right up into canada and this Line here and then all the way down almost into kansas and you can trace airflow this way But this map is also showing you how unusually high or unusually low these heights are With the shading and so the reds or the redder reds of the salmon color here are abnormally high heights This is why they're having so much heat and so in california and nevada and arizona they're hitting some records down there And unusually cold up in new england with some snow and like that So right now we are under northwest flow and northwest flow is kind of interesting for colorado and the great plains because you have a lot of cool air or cold air not far away You can get ripples A little short waves shorter ripples like this Traveling down this flow you can get a really quick storm really quick cold front And everything changes just for a day and get some snow when it's really cold some rain and thunderstorms So it's a little warmer and more moisture in the air So we are under northwest flow. We have lots of weakness in the flow pattern up here. Let's go forward To thursday the ridge is getting a little stronger Maybe a little stronger north on the west coast This troughiness is a big I wouldn't say polar vortex, but it's a big good vortex coming down Out of canada cold air for the eastern us a big trough off the east coast People in florida even are going to feel this go. Hey, this feels like early spring instead of summer We have a little ridge in the central part of the nation. That's what was just sitting over us The northwest flow continues, but on thursday morning. We have this little Ripple this is one of those short waves. It's actually a cut-off short wave. So it's Unusual creature. I don't know how many times I see that kind of feature But it's going to skirt right over us for a day. That'll kick down due north winds So we'll get cold air down with a cold front. It'll be gusty thursday night into friday But there's not very much moisture this ridge here was dry. This is dry We don't expect much rain out of this just a good windy cool down for about a day or two By sunday that low has gone down and kind of merged out here another one is formed But it's passing Right now it looks like it's passing further to the northeast of colorado So we'll feel less of an impact from this one Some models have it digging down and almost doing the same thing Getting close to colorado. Here's our northwest flow still going big ridge on the west coast giant trough on the east coast That's for sunday morning Looking next Tuesday midday Things begin to change The ridge is moving in so we expect to warm up to probably our warmest temperatures Next week will be centered on tuesday. We have an approaching trough a large one off the west coast We still have this east coast trough The northwest flow is now moved out into the great plains in ohio valley tensi Unlike that What is interesting though is it knows that pink or salmon color is almost gone Is a little spot there it'll spot down there, but it means these heights are normal for this time of year So even though it may be the warmest period in the week It temperatures will be very close to normal And this interesting trough over here this weakening of the ridge up here Bear is watching because if we go even further out We're going to go all beyond next week to the week after that may 18th. So you're middle of the month already We see a big switch look at this gigantic ridge that's established in the east and a big trough in the west So some storminess way out there 10 days from now Something we'll be talking about in a future video As I said, there's not a lot of moisture with this ridge and with this passing trough So the five-day precipitation total from the gfs shows really nothing. There's a couple spots That could be completely gone or maybe Different county in the next model run not significant A little bit of very light precipitation up in Wyoming and Nebraska Going out the next 10 days Maybe that secondary trough from the weekend Will amount to a little more maybe we'll get a little more moisture in Put a little more precipitation up in the mountains I wouldn't put a lot of confidence in this northwest flow is pretty notorious for being Shifty so we are in the tenth through a quarter inch over the whole 10 day period Maybe this is all coming from that big trough coming in Way out in 10 days Again, not a lot of confidence in the forecast that far out just kind of fun to show you and see what we see Looking for the next 10 days On the gfs. We see our normal high increasing here our normal lows increasing here Normal lows now above freezing That doesn't mean we can't get a good frost or a good freeze at some point Here's our thursday cold front coming in And dipping temperatures for friday at the end of the weekend Pretty dry down here just about normal at least in the normal window And on into next week. There's our Tuesday time period Normal temperatures a little above normal after that and then back down after that We got a little chance of showers out here a little chance of showers This one's probably due to that big trough coming into the west So far away we'll have to Check on it later So looking in the next seven days in graphical form Dry some clouds coming in for the weekend a little chance of showers A lot 30 25 chance of showers the beginning of beginning of next week We might see a stray shower friday night with that cold front coming in and The things that northwest flow can do but wouldn't put much money on it at all Before we go today, I would like to take a look at may severe weather And the us and take a look at the colorado and longmont area here Now this is any severe probability. I just want to keep it simple This is high winds Hail or tornadoes all combined. You can see the northeastern and eastern plains On in colorado have a bit of a chance just a very slight Occurrence of severe weather historically right along the I-25 for the first week of may if we go to The next week you can see chances of severe weather Starting to nudge their way into northern counties in a long I-25 still pretty low Getting closer for the third week of may and for the fourth week of may You're starting to see a pretty good chance of Relatively speaking a severe weather out in the eastern plains and a better chance of severe weather right along I-25 So we're entering severe weather season. You should have some Good weather apps. I'll try to remember to be put up the names of some good weather apps next time But all the local tv stations have weather apps or storm alert dark skies just a few that come to mind But those those will can be set up for notifications on your phone So you'll buzz you'll get on your smartwatch if you have one Just good to have something that alerts you When you're inside and don't notice the skies to the west or northwest getting all dark For more local news, please check out the longmont observer at longmontobserver.org My weather column is there too and I update that quite frequently to keep up with Changes in the weather and giving you some reports of what weather happened recently like the pea size hail over the weekend This has been your weather forecast for longmont I'm chief meteorologist Jenensworth from Longmont Public Media. Keep looking up