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Forecast Discussion:
The big storms formed, were far apart (on Tuesday), and dumped serious hail on a few locations. Longmont dodged a big one around 5pm Tuesday (Figure 1).
The atmosphere continues to dry out at most levels (low level moisture kept Tuesday storms alive). The red and black colors are atmospheric columns are low on moisture content in Figure 2. The GFS is forecasting little rain over the next 48 hours (Figure 3). Both this model and the one used Tuesday morning on Channel 7 news had storms up in Nebraska send a gust front back to the Front Range today that initiated a big storm around Fort Collins. That will be interesting to see if it occurs.
The longer range forecast:
The 10 day forecast has a chance of a storm Wednesday (our storm from above?) then very little but a few afternoon storms in afternoon by the weekend and beyond. Temperatures change very little and hover in the upper 80's F throughout the forecast period (Figure 4).
As an interesting note, we have four tropical systems between Mexico and Hawaii (Figure 5). As Joe Bastardi from WeatherBell says, you get a "Ridge over Troubled Water." There has been a big ridge over the southwest for a long time, so this makes sense. What is even more interesting is that the eastern two-most storms (Llena and John) might merge in a few days. I've seen tropical system dance around one another, but I've not seen two merge (Figure 6).
