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Forecast Discussion:
We made up for not hitting 80F for the last few days by hitting 87F with strong down slope winds as the front approached. By tonight, the front will be draped somewhere east of I-25 with widespread showers possible over the entire state (Figure 1). All this instability is driven by the approaching upper level trough with a shortwave embedded in it to boot (smaller red trough line east of the main trough axis, Figure 2).
The longer range forecast:
In Figure 3, I've drawn the 70F line in mustard, 60F in teal, 50F in violet and the freezing line in magenta. This is an average, so though the error bars extend beyond freezing, the mean stays warmer than that magical, plant killing, temperature. As for rainfall (the bottom panel) we have 3 distinct storm events over the next 3 days, then it becomes a messy confusing long-range period of daily rain chances. What a change!
Looking at rainfall totals, the weatherunderground.com model gives us 0.60" through Sunday and a total of 1.10" of rain over the next 10 days.
Figure 4 is the GFS through Sunday and it looks like about 0.25 to 0.50".
Figure 5 is the GFS over the next 10 days and it is about 1.00 to 1.25". They agree!
