 Hello, my public media. This is the weather forecast for Longmont. I'm chief meteorologist John insworth We're covering the period Thursday through Saturday, March 12th through 14th We're gonna first start with a spooky Friday the 13th moon It's waning gibbous. It'll be rising after 10 o'clock So if you're out for a date that night and it's not too cloudy There will be a pretty good moon rising up in the eastern sky But to the weather the story is a tale of two jet streams We have a jet stream up north going across Canada with ridge trough ridge trough Alternating and then down south we have this low that's been spinning there since last week and it's got over it trough ridge pattern and It is pumping moisture up into Mexico and off towards Texas looking at the satellite image This is the water vapor image for Tuesday and you can see the whites and the purples here are moist Atmosphere or high clouds I see cloud tops there and the oranges and the reds down here are very dry sinking air You can see the circulation around the low just at the edge of the screen here pumping this moisture Across Baja and up in Mexico and towards Texas eventually. This is our source of moisture for the next storm Putting the whole thing out in a spoiler here. We've got warm weather through the week Above freezing temperatures a day and night most of the time until Monday Tuesday And then the bottom drops out we go to temperatures below freezing. We have our first big rain event here It's all organized for Friday night and the Saturday morning, and then we have snow starting and Continuing on through most of next week. So why is that happening? Well, it's We have the low coming in off the Pacific Ocean into the desert Southwest We should see some flooding in Southern California probably in Arizona as that moisture heads our way The mountains will be squeezing a lot of the moisture out. So for a while, we stay dry Downstream of the Rockies, but that will change so looking at our two jet streams, we have the one coming out of Alaska across the Great Lakes, and then we have our Jet stream coming around the low down south and the two are disconnected with that low coming onshore Thursday night By Friday night It's starting to reconnect with the northern branch of the jet stream and the low is right around the four corners area This is a great location to pump moisture up into Colorado But the heat that we have is still in place because of this ridge just east of us So still pretty warm for snow on this part of the system But going on to Saturday You can see that low that was up in the Pacific Northwest coming down to the Oregon Washington area really getting strong the more lines you have around the low that the stronger it is You can even see the colors here wind speed So the tighter the lines are the higher the wind speeds and they color more of a pink color for What are called jet maxes when we get those overhead we get additional rain or additional snow But the ridge is kind of reconnected out over here in the Midwest And then going to Monday we see the two have disconnected again. We've got the low heading into southern Nevada we're right on the upstream side where all the exciting weather happens and Here comes our big snowy cold event So how much rain are we going to get well over the next five days? It's still not much This is our Friday into Saturday morning total It's about a tenth of an inch to a quarter of an inch around here But then going out for the full ten days and pulling in the beginning of the next Stormy period we're up to about half an inch to three quarters of an inch some locations near town We'll get up to an inch of of water up in the mountains. You can see this is actual water total So you've got an inch and a half to two and a half inches in some locations So if the resorts were starting to sweat because of all the warm weather in the first part of March They're going to be happier with what's coming Over the next five days. What's coming is a little bit of snow Maybe early Saturday morning if you go out in the dark in the coldest time You might see some snow in the air the latest model showed the snow not falling right near long It's confined to the foothills, but just a trace to an inch at maximum But I don't think it'll be much of anything but over the next ten days Four to five inches from this run in the latest run trended a little more heavy towards about six inches You can see pretty significant snows for the mountains There's a foot to foot and a half even some local spots to two feet of snow So winter is definitely coming back So looking at our big picture again Temperatures about freezing few Monday and Tuesday temperatures remaining below freezing after that Snow comes back next week. Now. How long will the snow go? It actually might stick around for a surprisingly long time So here's an animation of the same upper-level pattern Here's our low rolling around and then coming up into the four corners And then you can see another one dropping down From Western Canada into the West it's got another lobe rotating around it. We're out to Thursday Friday the 20th now. Here's another reinforcing shot coming down There's a piece ejecting out of rust probably dumping some more snow And this doesn't leave until about the 24th round Tuesday of March So all the way into the middle of the last full week of the month We'll have stormy conditions and snow around For the next seven days, we have temperatures in the 50s even for the weekend getting into the 60s again It's your last chance to get out and really enjoy some Colorado weather because next week we have temperatures Around freezing Tuesday, probably not as warm as 40 on Wednesday. It's just going to be really chilly So for more local news and more frequent weather updates, check out longmontobserver.org For a long amount of public media, I'm John Unsworth. Keep looking up