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Forecast Discussion:
If Wednesday was nice weather to you, today will be even better with a warm afternoon in the mid-upper 70's for a high temperature. And dry. Figure 1 is the surface analysis for Thursday afternoon showing a dry front poised to enter the state (that will cool us a bit on Friday) - the best heating is often seen right before the front arrives with southwest winds and some downslope compression of the air. Friday will be nice and dry, breezy and a bit cooler.
In the Longer Range:
The jet stream buckles over Colorado on Saturday with a sort-of split trough stretching from the eastern Pacific up into Montana. But there is really very little moisture associated with this. Small troughs (red lines) and ridges (blue lines) are marked in the colored lines across the continent (Figure 2).
Again, from the weather5280.com folks, we have a new product for this column in Figure 3. You can see the rise and fall of daily temperatures for the next 10 days across the top graph. The bottom graph is a vertical stack of 20 GFS computer runs that don't show rainfall until way out around the 19th to 21st. Saturday (purple line) looks dry - but it may be windy.
As a bonus, for Thursday (not the long term) - I've checked in on the HRRR smoke forecast to see if the California fires may darken our skies yet... and though it is forecasted to eventually make it into Colorado, Figure 4 shows it is not here by Thursday.
