This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Forecast Discussion:
Before we look at - what is shaping up to be the first great soaking storm of the Spring - let's look at our state's state of dryness. Figure 1 is the freshly released Colorado state drought index. We have only a little bit of the two least severe drought levels down in the southern counties. We, like much of the nation, are remarkably drought free. And here comes more water.
But not today - we have warming temperatures and dry air under a high pressure system (Figure 2) and a ridge aloft (not shown). It'll be windy at times, but nothing terrible. We should break 80F Saturday with very small precipitation chances.
The longer range forecast:
First, the Easter Forecast: It looks like the rain holds off until around 1 or 2pm. The sunrise, at 6:14am, should see about 50% cloud cover and temperatures around 47F (not horribly cold). There is a minimal chance of a shower that early in the day.
The storm moves in around 1pm- ish (I'm glad I'm cooking Easter dinner inside this year!). The weatherunderground.com model (Figure 3) gives us about 1.25 inches of water between this time and Tuesday morning.
I'm going to page through the storm 6-hour-periods at a time. Figure 4, sunrise Easter morning, there is a bit of a high over the southern Rockies, still, and a weak low on the Kansas border. Things are mostly dry.
By 6pm Sunday, Figure 5, a trough has begun to dig along the Front Range. Up slope flow begins to intensify and the rain is underway (it looks like it forms quite suddenly after lunch (Figure 3)). By midnight Sunday there are some snows in the mountains but pretty heavy rain is falling around the Denver to Boulder to Loveland area (Figure 6). It is still raining some in northern Colorado Monday morning (Figure 7) continuing through the rest of the day, off and on. Rain chances finally tapers off Tuesday morning (Figure 8).
For precipitation totals (GFS only so far in these discussions):
Figure 9 gives us 1.5 inches of water.
For snowfall - Figure 10 keeps it up in the foothills and mountains. It looks like the higher elevations pick up another foot. Enjoy Spring!
