This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Forecast Discussion:
We had nice thunderstorms yesterday! The marginal risk was justified. The total precipitation was about 2/3rds of an inch in two waves, but a good area of Colorado from west of town up beyond Ft. Collins picked up 3/4ths to 1.5 inches of rain (Figure 1). I experienced about 20 minutes of pea sized hail during the storms. Parts of Berthoud had small hail drifts.
Figure 2 is the drought monitor graphic from last week. We'll watch for changes when they next update this. Boulder county and most of NE Colorado are not experiencing any drought conditions. Extreme drought and worse are still found in the southern 1/4th of the state. Send rain!
Things get very quiet and dry into the weekend (for a change). See the long term for details...
The long range forecast:
Let's look out over the next 10 days. Our normal high is still in the lower 70'sF, but we'll be pushing closer and closer to 90F into the weekend before another trough approaches and cools us. There are VERY low chances of rain until mid-next week (Figure 3). You get a strong dose of mid- to late summer for whatever pool activities you want to get into for the Memorial Day weekend.
The total precipitation for Colorado over the next 5 days (from the GFS too, Figure 4) doesn't give Longmont much of anything. The high mountains may see brief buildups that dump some rain in the afternoons. Summer time weather!!
