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Forecast Discussion:
Since this storm is rolling in Thursday PM - I'm posting the Friday discussion a 1/2 day early to cover this front. AND there is a chance of snow is now possible!! (Don't get the shovels or sleds out though.)
But first, where are we with the snowpack (this has been out on twitter today)? Figure 1 is the snowpack in dark blue (with the 'you are here' arrow) for Colorado overall. We are above where we were in 2015 (green line) but below normal stukk. Our last storm (with the prolonged moist westerly flow) was helpful!
The winds in Longmont were delayed until later in the afternoon. The high wind warning and fire danger were expected to expire at 9pm Thursday. Figure 1 shows those mountain and foothill winds and the blue arrow gives direction (also seen in the thin grey lines with arrows on them; streamlines).
Figure 2 shows the temperature anomaly map with an approximate location of the front midnight Thursday. Figure 3 has the front past us (and might actually be almost to Kansas in reality). Temperatures are dropping Friday by sunrise. By noon today (Friday)- much colder air is in place- state wide (the front is way off to the east and southeast) - Figure 5.
The good news is that, even though down slow flow will keep us pretty dry, enough lift and moisture should move in that we now get a coating to an inch of snow (Figure 6). But it is not a lot of water (Figure 7) 0.05-0.25 inches - with the low end most likely. You can see the good snow storm (with the wind--> blizzard conditions will be possible) way out near Nebraska in NE CO.
Figure 8 are the midday Friday winds, like Figure 2, and the powerful (sustained 25-30mph gusts to 50mph) north winds are still on tap for Longmont. A wide area of the plains sits with 55mph sustained winds midday today (Friday).
The longer range forecast:
We warm rapidly to almost 80F again on Monday. Our next chance of rain is Friday/Saturday at the end of the upcoming week. More on that later!
