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Forecast Discussion:
The clouds and moisture are in place, but the real lift will be focused over southern Colorado and New Mexico more than up here in Longmont. The front has pushed down to northern Mexico and New Mexico has has a bunch of rain falling (Figure 1). In Figure 2, the upper air map shows the big ridge building out west with the embedded trough under the ridge, but that trough is a bit further south than expected. Precipitation is just expected to make it to about the Wyoming border (Figure 3). The GFS total precipitation through Saturday PM paints 2-3 inches in the southern reaches of our state, but now Longmont only seems to pick up about a tenth of an inch of rain or so.
In the longer range:
The trough on Monday that we looked at earlier this week is much less pronounced in the forecast map (Figure 5) so we don't expect much of a storm now at the end of the weekend - still no heat returns either. Maria is 'just' back up to a Category 1 strength and is just beginning to turn east as of Wednesday PM. It is expected to shoot across the Atlantic and rain on the British isles.
