 Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, May 4th, 2022. I'm Chief Meteorologist John Ensworth for Longmont Public Media. So Sunday, May 8th is our first quarter moon. It's back in the Western sky giving us something to look at. This is on its way to a total lunar eclipse the following Sunday night. So that's pretty exciting. Go out in the evening. The eclipse starts right after mid, right after sunset and concludes before midnight. So nicely placed in time in the evening. Low in the southeastern sky. Looking at drought conditions, we have a drought just getting a little worse. Around I-25 and like that and another tick worse into severe drought after that. Now we're going to see rain obviously has been falling this week and that's going to help a lot. Nationally we have relief in the Great Plains and a little worsening in the mountains. Looking at our snowfall. I'll keep doing this for a little bit longer as it tracks down below the normal, the median line there. We're at 76% normal for this time of year. That does take into account climatology. So it is compared to what should be out there. So it's not great, but we do at least have the snowpack up there. About looking at precipitation and this why might see a bump up next week in that. Up to 7 a.m. Monday, we had a quarter inch or so around Longmont. Almost half inch around Boulder, Broomfield just about two tenths. The next day we got just under a tenth of an inch more. Just about tenth or more in Boulder. Not much in Broomfield. Up to Wednesday, we got another about third of an inch and then right around Boulder, almost an inch. So it's been continued to rain through the morning and some thunderstorms should move down on Wednesday. So great moisture there. Looking at the big picture for the last seven days. We can see the mountains getting it and not much on the plains. Hence our worsening drought. We do have a little smoke coming back on Thursday from the fires down in New Mexico. Should be curling around behind the departing system. Looking at the climatology for severe weather. Looking down about three more minutes until the bell. You can see they're going into second week, third week of April, fourth week of April, and first week of May. The severe chances are now inching into northeast. So we don't have a severe weather coming in the next few days. So the climatology is there. We do have the chance of thunder on Wednesday. Really bad stuff going on in Oklahoma. Many terminals are likely on Wednesday. That severe chance moves into east Texas and up into Arkansas and Missouri and even to Tennessee and Kentucky a little bit. A little bit of Alabama. And then Friday goes further over into the southeast getting Georgia Louisiana. So looking at the surface systems. We have lows here pushing moisture back up. That's the main low of the system pushing moisture towards us. By Thursday that's departing. A little bit of showers on the eastern plains and then clearing out the next day. We've got one minute to the bell. I'm looking at the normals. We go from 67 to 71. 39 to 42 for lows and temperatures are going to be generally warmer than normal for much of the next week. Our rain on Wednesday is departing. Little chances of showers throughout this could be something very different. We're going to take a look at that in just a moment. So Wednesday we have the big low in the mountains. We'll ridge out to the east. This is what's kicking off the severe weather in the dive flow in the area of the upper level flow. Looking at the water vapor satellite. You can see they have plenty of more from the Gulf of the Pacific and then our low out in the west. Next Thursday though another trough digs in. Here's a high pressure system on the east coast. And we see that one kicking off a big line of probably severe weather in eastern plains of Colorado. There's the cool air with the rain and thunderstorms forming. A little warm air still left behind it on the back of the dry line. So let's look at the next 10 days. You can see the trough moving out. You can see a ridge coming back in giving us 80 and 80 above for the first part of the weekend. This little passing trough for cool is briefly and then we warm up again after that. So we are in the Monday next week and then the troughs start to really form Tuesday out in the western part of the nation and really looks like it's going to crank. That's what I think is going to be a much more severe system than looked like on the GFS. Looking at the next 10 days in temperature we have cold pool out here. We have warm air coming in for the weekend and then just kind of a little sloshing back and forth of cool air coming in to the north. It barely pushes down as a weak cool front. The colder stuff kind of holds back. There's a little cold front again and it's gone again. It's not until later in the week that this cold air finally gets moving. You can see the thunderstorms there briefly. And looking at precipitation, we have the departing system, the severe weather on the plains. Then the next day is severe weather again. And then the next day is severe weather again. We stay high and dry for quite a while. Little passing showers with that little cold front of the weekend. Lowes form in the other rockies but move on out. Taking a look at Tuesday. Here comes the colder air in the west. Temperatures below freezing down deep into california. There's our line of thunderstorm, wraparound, rain, snow and precipitation. So over the next five days we have a little bit of moisture in the upslope along the I-25 and out of the plains. Very little snow in the higher mountains. Over the next 10 days, more significant moisture. Maybe that's a hint of that next system. And then the snow is pretty good for the northern mountains. Through our 50s, 70s and then 80s going into the weekend. Cool down with that cool front. Chance of showers at the beginning of the week and then we start warming up again. Let me conclude with a look into May. Last time I actually showed you the May-June-July outlook and not just the May outlook. So the May outlook here is below normal temperatures in the northern rockies and above in the south. And above normal precipitation here. I don't know why it's not above normal here. And below normal precipitation going through much of southwestern Colorado. So for frequent weather updates and local news, check out LongmontLeader on BroomfieldLeaders.com. This has been Chief Finger Office, John Nansworth. Keep looking up.