Chinook

In my opinion, this could be as potent as 10/31 ( a few days ago.) As a reminder, on 10/31 there were 192 wind reports and 56 preliminary tornado reports, (possibly 15 confirmed, as per Wikipedia) Watch out! The 3-km convection allowing models now show organized thunderstorms in Arkansas into W Tennessee and W Kentucky. Look at these SRH values (500 m2/s2) that should exist with convection (surface based convection, or close enough). So, this isn't some sort of meaningless SRH plot, there should be surface-based convection, with a pretty high chance of wind reports after sunset in western Tennessee. The tornado situation should be watched closely.

I was just hearing some weird noises here... 60mph winds at the foothills. Low pressure, cold front, heavy snow showers in the mountains right now. Right now we are getting the highest measured wind gusts in Fort Collins since 4/17.

Fairly good verification on this day-1 outlook

These CFS runs are now -very- different from the most recent GEFS runs, which run out to Nov. 16-17. If you look at GEFS 5-day averages of 850mb temp anomaly or surface temp anomaly, they have many days of below normals for the Midwest and southern Canada.

In the next several days, it looks like 3 snowstorms will happen in the Rockies with a northwesterly flow aloft, and bring snow to NW Wyoming and a pretty good section of Colorado above 8000 ft. The GFS runs today have had some 2.0" of QPF at Rocky Mountain N.P. and Steamboat Springs within 7 days. This would be 20" to 40" at these higher elevations, with some 7000-10000 ft areas of getting 10" or better.

I saw this on twitter, as a reminder as just how powerful the storms have been that have affected the US and the US Territories

Tuesday night to Wednesday mid-day, there should be rain changing to snow for lower elevations near here. The snow forecast may be tricky from Denver/Boulder southward to Trinidad/Raton NM. Some areas under 6000 ft. could get over 6" of snow, but I think it will be less than that for downtown Denver, and also near me. The GFS/NAM show temps of 35 with snow falling on Wednesday morning in the cities. Synoptically, it's mostly just a cold front with convergence at the Rocky Mountains, nothing very unusual.

Here are some very neat ensemble plume graphs, for multiple variables, available from Weather.us: https://weather.us/forecast/ensemble and also NOAA: http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gc_wmb/tdorian/gefs/EMCGEFSplumes.html graphic from Weather.us web site is shown below. The temperature is dropping in Denver!

I am trying to figure out the synoptics on the Tuesday-Wednesday (Halloween) storm system. The Euro doesn't seem to want to cooperate with the GFS on the 500mb trough or the total QPF. Generally, I would say northeast Colorado has a chance at 2-4" of snow at low elevations during this time frame, with possible rain. Things could change.

CoCoRAHS shows that up to 1.80" of rain fell in Albuquerque. That's some helpful water for a semi-desert in a drought.

Hurricane Willa has made landfall on western Mexico as a major hurricane (105 kt) at about 0102z (7:02PM Mountain Time) This probably has led to some serious flooding concerns. This is a piece of the NHC discussion yesterday afternoon before landfall.

It seems about time to start a new discussion thread for winter. Around here, the temperatures here have been pleasantly above 60 since 10/17. We had our heavy snow and frost on 10/14, which killed a lot of the tree colors, particularly the cottonwood tree colors. The GFS/Euro have showing some snow for the Front Range on Halloween, one week from today.

I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but the view from Fort Collins obscures the Mummy Range. Looking great with some new snow on the higher mountains.

Flint has 43 degrees after the rain started, with a nearly-severe wind gust of 56mph. That's quite a convective storm for these low temperatures.

0.25-0.70" diameter inch hail reported near Grand Rapids MI

Things are warming up a lot here. Our temperatures were about 65 here. We had a high of 29 on Sunday. Denver was 27 degrees on Sunday. Denver hasn't had a high temperature of 27 or lower since February 22nd, 2018. Great Falls MT was warmer than Brownsville TX today Yesterday, Edmonton, Canada area was 70-74 and Brownsville TX was 63. Texas has really been socked in with cool weather. The Midland-Odessa area was 42 degrees on Tuesday afternoon. They haven't had a high of 42 or lower since February 21st, 2018. That was 8 months ago.

Central Texas rainfall of over 7" caused some rivers to go into flood stage

Fort Collins just had a record low of 12 degrees yesterday. Interestingly, the electronic thermometer at CSU had a low of 14.0 instead of 12. This thermometer is just a few feet away from the analog thermometer used for the official measurements.

My area got 5.5" of snow on Saturday and Sunday. There were some 6-7" from Fort Collins and Boulder, 4-6" in Cheyenne, and something like 2" for Denver. There were a large number of places across the northern plains that got over 1", which is pretty impressive for lower elevations at this time of year.

Hurricane Michael IR satellite loop that I made http://www.greatlakes.salsite.com/Hurricane_Michael_IR_loop.html

My area is getting the storm now. The temperature has fallen to 30 quickly. We have some snow accumulation of 1/2" or less, with 20-30mph wind gusts (gust to 36mph at Fort Collins-Loveland Airport)

Here is a silver maple tree in Colorado. We had one like this in Ohio. Not too many maples are in the cities in Colorado. The hardwoods of the East are uncommon for the dry western climates.

Silver maple leaves on a bright, sunny day! There have been so few moments with blue skies and sun since the leaves turned.

With the snow and the cold coming up here, the trees might drop their leaves before you can appreciate them.

This is looking better as far as getting precipitation in this state. The western areas have done pretty well. Fort Collins and Loveland have gotten 0.6" or better. I got 0.65" at my place this month, including that snow that melted on contact. The snow happened for a number of hours on Wednesday, but didn't accumulate. Coming up this weekend - accumulating snow!! I think it's a little too early for this.