Chinook

The 06z Day-1 outlook has a large moderate risk with a large 15% hatched tornado outlook by the SPC, also including a 45% hatched wind outlook for this same general area that is covered with the 15% on this graphic. Of interest: SPC discusses later evening tornadoes, separate from the main squall line. Below is the 6th paragraph of the discussion text.

western Tennessee, enhanced risk

The 00z CAMs have several updraft helicity tracks up by Memphis on Wednesday, with the squall line. It's possible that this segment will have a hard time getting the higher CAPE values and discrete storms, but it still seems like this may be a very active area. This seems to be a very analogous situation to last week (3/22), when several tornado and wind reports happened north of Jackson Mississippi within the large squall line, a little north of the moderate risk contour.

It's too bad this larger upper level low will not bring a lot of precipitation to the West these days. There has been some rain in California, but otherwise only scattered rain and snow in the Mountain West region. My area will get rain showers tomorrow. For me, Saturday was upper 70s, and yesterday was only 59 or 60 degrees due to clouds. Today, there were upper 40's as of late morning, and then got to the upper 70's in the afternoon with the mixing of the afternoon. Now, there are kind of washed-out clouds at sunset, with no real sunset colors. I didn't get any pictures of lenticular clouds today, but maybe somebody posted some pics of UFO-shaped clouds on twitter somewhere. The US drought monitor has been updated to category D0 and D1 in some parts of Colorado. and now we have a second fire, and I saw that smoke this afternoon

I was driving south yesterday on I-25 and I saw some of the smoke from the Boulder-NCAR fire.

If you have a 33% chance to be above normal, do you have a 67% chance to be below normal? If you have a 33% chance to be below normal, do you have a 67% chance to be above normal? The logic of the portrayal of the outlooks has never made sense in the last 20 years.

small but tornado warned circulation near Troy (radar is from Dayton)

the Gilmer TX debris signature popped up in the last 10 minutes, just a bit south of town

this tornado was behind the rear flank downdraft and moved NNE into the heavy rain

things are not shaping up to be a big storm. The NWS official gridded forecast now says 1.9" for Denver, 3.6" for the Palmer Divide. This value for the Palmer Divide is about 10x less than what the GFS had 3-4 days ago. and.. a whole 3-6" for the mountains!!

I am thinking maybe the chances for numerous tornadoes may get going at 00z-02z, meaning that nighttime tornadoes could be a threat.

Looks like Denver city got 1.10" of total precip from this week. I'd say the 00z GFS/Canadian/UKMET keep up some decent hope for heavy snow for the Palmer Divide/I-70 east, southeast Colorado, and the Denver foothills. Roughly 0.4-0.5" water equivalent of snow for the mountains above 9000ft is really not above normal for a storm

For Monday-Wednesday, the ECMWF just doesn't want to predict as much snow for eastern Colorado as does the GFS and others. Maybe that's a sign that there are many details yet to be worked out.

Here is the 1:00AM radar/precip type plot. There was moderate snow with higher reflectivity at Denver, but still rain at Fort Collins-Loveland, and a recent changeover to snow at Cheyenne (6100ft)

there have been reports of 5" at Federal Heights/Northglenn and 6" at Littleton, 10" Parker, 7.3" at DIA

There are just some days when Mayjawintastawm shouldn't look at the GFS to about 120 hours. And this is one of those days.

hourly rainfall: 0.04" at Fort Collins-Loveland. It has been a long time since I've seen that, without it being snow. apparently it rained in Loveland before Christmas when I wasn't there.

There is a winter weather advisory for several areas and a winter storm warning for the Palmer Divide and just west of Denver, including Boulder city, less than 6000ft. Looks like the HRRR says there will be some rain after 6:00PM for the Denver area, with snow later at night. hmm, what's that on the models? A larger 500mb low on next Monday/Tuesday in New Mexico. I wonder if we could get some snow in Denver and severe weather on the Plains.

The 00z NAM/GFS/Canadian really do like the Palmer Divide, Colorado Springs, and most of the foothills above 7000ft. GFS has over 15" above 7000ft west of Denver. Maybe the models have figured out a few more aspects of the storm, maybe not. As for me, I believe I've gotten 39.5" since December 31st and 0.5" before December 31st. (3.10" since Dec 31st and 0.14" from Nov 1st-Dec 30th). Much of the snow that is in the shade has melted. The snow that has been in the shade for all this time is crusty snow that has been there since December 31st. Many individual days were snowy without a complete melt when it was 50-60 degrees, at least for very shady areas or small hills facing away from the sun. It's really nice to see some blue skies and 55 degrees. Unfortunately, we can still say this late winter has still been drought/weak winter for western areas. And, by the way, this is the one-year anniversary of the blizzard, when many of us got 20" of snow, blizzard conditions existed for many areas, and the water content was absolutely impressive, over 3" at my place.

WPC still has quite a bit QPF for Wednesday-Thursday morning/afternoon, around Denver. It is possible that the first precipitation could be in the form of rain. The 500mb trough does not seem too large, but maybe the models see the atmosphere has just enough moisture to give out, in kind of a short time frame.

So, the massive storm on the 18z GFS that we talked about on Monday March 7th was certainly a fantasy storm. However, we will have a quick-moving 500mb trough moving through on Thursday March 17th. Each model shows brief but heavy snow from Denver to Colorado Springs. Edit: 00z GFS has a lot of QPF for Denver area. So this is sure to taunt Mayjawintastawm when it doesn't work out right.

some snow bands to 35-40dBz near Nashville

I think I got 1.5" or possibly more. This whole 16 degrees in the afternoon stuff is 38 degrees below the average of high temperature 54.

I know this isn't near Springfield or Joplin, but hey, I'm a fan of mesoscale snow discussions in Kansas

The Denver cyclone swirl is evident on radar loop and the surface wind directions. As for me, it is sunny and snowy at the same time. Well, sunny enough to see shadows a few minutes ago.