Chinook

Today, I think some smoke came in from California in the upper atmosphere, and my area may have had some (smellable?) smoke from the Cameron Peak fire. My visibility toward the mountains was possibly 10 miles in the evening today, and maybe a little better yesterday. Overall, definitely more noticeable smoke/haze towards the mountains on these days (Thursday/Friday) than the other days. Yesterday, I had brief thunderstorms to my north and south at different times-- saw about 3 lightning bolts.

I got 95.5 degrees when I put my thermometer outdoors today, but these mesonet stations got 98-99 in Loveland. Here's the temps from my area. Denver had a record high of 100 degrees. I expect the smoke and bad air quality to come back to me, with so many fires nearby. For right now, the NW flow aloft may take the smoke away from my area, like today.

Pine Gulch fire near Grand Junction is (I think) not too close to city developments, thankfully. It is up to 87000 acres, and it will soon be bigger than the max. extent of the High Park Fire, which was near Fort Collins 8 years ago. Yesterday and today, the air quality has improved a lot here, with only slight haze and no smell of smoke. The smoke clouds seem to be going towards Denver...

This seems to go along with all those extreme heat warnings I have been seeing on the NWS national map.

People got some pictures of lightning bolts over San Francisco this morning. I have never heard of a thunderstorm directly over San Francisco in summertime.

Sunset on Friday- the cloud is really the smoke plume from the Cameron Peak fire. My area has had considerable smoke since Friday. Yesterday morning and this morning, I have been able to smell it.

Satellite image from last night-- the clouds that you see in the north/central of Colorado are largely pyrocumulus

My area stayed at about 86 degrees today, a nice relief from the 90's. For some of this afternoon, there was a thick cloud of smoke above us from the Cameron Peak fire. We still had some fairly normal sunshine and blue skies, though. Overall, the Pine Gulch fire near Grand Junction has become a much bigger fire than any of the others in recent years, at over 72000 acres today.

Possible tornado near Rockford

Yesterday my area was up to about 95 or 96 degrees. KFNL airport had 100 degrees. At sunset, I saw a few nice red colors that reminded me of forest fire smoke. My best guess is that it was smoke from a fire near Grand Junction, which may be new.

Hailstorm near Greeley at about 5:00PM

Storm with possible 0.75"-1.0" hail headed toward DIA

We could get some scattered severe thunderstorms near here tomorrow. NAM profiles show 0-6km shear values of 40 kts with some decent CAPE. July 2020 was Denver's warmest month since July 2012, but Fort Collins was not quite that bad.

Some thunderstorm structure, sort of

Yesterday (7/31) I was jogging at about 7:30, and I saw that Long's Peak in the distance looked like a slightly dark silhouette on a background of yellow light, below a dark cloud. It was raining in between me and Long's Peak. Today (8/1) my area had a thunderstorm in mid-afternoon. It looked like there was a decent hailstorm was northwest of Fort Collins at about 7:20PM. That storm weakened considerably as it approached Loveland. Edit: I got 0.35" for the day. I'm not sure if much of this fell at nighttime. That's almost as much as last month.

This was posted by NWS-CLE

Yesterday, my area had a high of 80 and a rainfall of 0.18" with a few moments of lightning/thunder/heavy rain. So that brings my monthly rain to about 0.44", which is not as pathetic as I might have thought, but still pretty low.

On July 26th, my area had a trace to 0.01". On July 28th, we had clouds and sprinkles early afternoon, then sunny, then we had some rain and weak thunder at 6:45 - 7:15PM. It was about 0.01" to 0.10", possibly higher in areas of Loveland. Then, we had a partly sunny sunset, with very orange clouds, and some of the rain to the east was highlighted with orange light. I might have been able to see the stars and the comet after sunset, but I didn't really look. For far western areas-- the Phoenix area and the Columbia River (interior desert) area both have Excessive Heat Warnings soon, with temperatures up to 109 at the Columbia River.

My place has had minor rainfall over the past few days. My total for the month may be around 0.14"-0.20". July 22, an evening storm with light-moderate rain, 0.02" and little lightning. July 24th, trace to 0.01". July 25th, 0.03" or 0.04". July 26th, possibly another trace to 0.06". Tonight (July 26th) the clouds cleared away, and I could see Comet Neowise through binoculars. It has moved up and to the left of where I saw it a few days ago. I could barely see the comet's tail with binoculars. I think this may be the last time I get a look at it, if it is getting dimmer, and if there are a few more days of evening clouds. Interesting note. I was checking the satellite images today, and the GOES-16 data feeds seem to have disappeared from about 2:36PM to 9:15PM. I don't know exactly what happened. I'm glad this didn't happen yesterday, because most of the USA was interested the satellite images of Hurricane Hanna.

Radar-estimated rainfall from the hurricane

I really didn't expect this hurricane to be at a 90mph intensity near Hawaii, but here it is

Tonight, there were some rain showers to my west at 6:00-7:00, then a lot of the clouds cleared away at about 8:00. Then, I tried to look for the comet at 9:00-9:30, but some patchy altocumulus were blocking the view. Tomorrow, models have a chance of showers and thunderstorms near here. Apparently the driving factor will be high precipitable water, but not high CAPE.

Good news: it looks like the Southwest monsoon is kicking into gear, with models and model ensembles showing much higher precipitation over the next 7-10 days along the AZ/NM border and into Colorado.

This is the primary NOAA web page for storm-centered satellite pictures... https://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/floaters.html -- better web page -- https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/index.php

Toledo is currently on track to have the warmest July in history, as the monthly average from July 1st - 21st is 79.3 degrees. The top 2 warmest July months are 79.0 (1921) and 78.8 (2011).