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The Next Storm/Next Snow and Lunar Eclipse Forecast Discussion from the Cherrywood Observatory – January 27, 2018

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Forecast Discussion:

The mini storm on Friday brought a few inches of powder to the ski resorts making people happy and messing up some high country roads making people unhappy.

We sail into the weekend with near normal temperatures- then we climb to a week high temperature on Tuesday in the 60's (Figure 1).  This heat up comes from westerly down slope flow and a big western ridge visible in the Monday upper air map (Figure 2), and the Tuesday upper air map (Figure 3).  Then our next storm moves in, just in time for the total lunar eclipse predawn on Wednesday.

Figure 1: The 10 day graphical forecast for Longmont from weatherunderground.com

Figure 2: 500mb upper air forecast map from the GFS for Monday morning.

Figure 3: 500mb upper air forecast map from the GFS for Tuesday morning.

In the longer range forecast:

If you look back on the previous couple of day cyclone location maps for the morning of the eclipse, you'll notice that the ensemble runs are mainly putting the dominant low up in Canada, but there still is a front and low down in NE Colorado (Figure 4). The rain and snow chances for Wednesday and Thursday are still on the map (Figure 1) with Longmont maybe getting up to an inch of snow by later Thursday (Figure 5).

It looks to be a storm big enough to interfere with the eclipse, but not big enough to interfere with your drive to work.

Figure 4: The ensemble map forecasting cyclone locations (low pressure centers - yellows and greens/blues = more confident) from weathermodels.com and wx.graphics

Figure 5: The total snowfall forecast from the GFS between Friday PM and late Thursday night.

Current Weather

Cloudy

Cloudy

46°F

UV Index
0 Low
Pressure
30.17 Rising
Visibility
8 miles
Dewpoint
25 °F
Humidity
44%
Wind
NW 2.2 mph
Gust
4.5 mph
Wind Chill
46 °F

Hourly Forecast

Today
8 AM
46°F
Intermittent clouds
Today
9 AM
48°F
Intermittent clouds
Today
10 AM
50°F
Intermittent clouds
Today
11 AM
53°F
Intermittent clouds
Today
12 PM
56°F
Intermittent clouds
Today
1 PM
58°F
Intermittent clouds
Today
2 PM
60°F
Mostly cloudy
Today
3 PM
61°F
Cloudy
Today
4 PM
63°F
Cloudy
Today
5 PM
61°F
Cloudy
Today
6 PM
59°F
Cloudy
Today
7 PM
56°F
Cloudy

7 Day Forecast

Mostly cloudy

Tuesday

63 °F

Mostly cloudy and cooler


Partly cloudy w/ t-storms

Tuesday Night

39 °F

An evening thundershower; otherwise, partly cloudy


Mostly sunny

Wednesday

76 °F

Pleasant and warmer with sunshine and patchy clouds


Partly cloudy

Wednesday Night

41 °F

Patchy clouds


Mostly cloudy

Thursday

75 °F

Turning cloudy, warm; breezy, a thunderstorm around in the afternoon


Cloudy

Thursday Night

48 °F

Considerable cloudiness with a thundershower in parts of the area


Showers

Friday

69 °F

Mostly cloudy with a couple of showers


Thunderstorms

Friday Night

46 °F

Cloudy; thundershowers in the evening, then late-night rain


Showers

Saturday

53 °F

Low clouds and cooler with a couple of showers


Rain

Saturday Night

41 °F

Occasional rain and drizzle


Sunrise and Sunset

Sunrise
6:10 AM
Sunset
7:48 PM

Based on AccuWeather data