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In Brief:
Very abnormally warm weather is settling in. Some models raise temperatures to 60F or higher Sunday. Another storm is lurking in the Monday night to Thursday morning time frame, but the precipitation will likely remain far to the east of our part of the state (with snow up in the mountains- as usual). The cool down associated with this system is also minimal. We bounce back to the upper 50'sF for the next weekend again.
Forecast Discussion:
The cool air for the central and eastern parts of the U.S. called for by WeatherBell (see discussions at the start of the month) may have materialized, but we will not see that cold air make it back to Colorado. There are stiff iguanas in Florida, I've heard. We are high and dry with ongoing snow in the mountains. This snow is just enough to snarl traffic trying to make it through the mountains (blue arrow Figure 1).
The big picture for Colorado is the big ridge in the western U.S. and big trough in the central/eastern portion of the nation (Figure 2). For fun, we can move our camera out further to pull in the entire northern hemisphere in Figure 3 for an even bigger picture. There is a large trough over the Himalayas, a ridge over Japan, a trough in the Pacific, our western ridge and eastern trough, a ridge over the western Atlantic, a trough over the central Atlantic and big ridge over Europe. On top of this pattern, there are a number of short waves rippling around the planet. This is a pretty stable situation. The ridge over the West should stay put for a while.
The temperature-departure-from-normal map (Figure 4) for the U.S. shows the remains of that super cold air in the middle of the country sitting down in the southeastern states. The rest of the nation is quite a bit above normal - like Colorado (outside of the mountains).
The Longer Range Forecast:
We warm to the middle to upper 50'sF for the weekend (Figure 5). We may even break 60F on Sunday with some down slope flow adding to the ridge overhead. Our storm next week is fading out (as they seem to do this year). We'll keep an eye on it here. New snowfall through the weekend is light in the northern and central mountains (Figure 6). The next storm - if it produces any snow next Tuesday-Thursday, may give us a coating to an inch west of town (Figure 7).
