mayjawintastawm

"I've seen fire, and I've seen snow... I've seen tornadoes and some hail like you'd never know... I've seen blizzards, heat, and drought that never ends... So I know that I'm in Colorado again." - cue the tomatoes..... (huge apologies to JT but couldn't resist)

Missed it by that much. Sept turned out to average 69.3 degrees, thanks to a slightly cooler than predicted low temp the last couple days of the month, with the old record of 69.4. Of note, however, is that the 2nd warmest Sept came right after the 3rd warmest August. I don't know where to look, but I'd bet that was the warmest Jul-Aug combination on record.

wow! On another note, looks like Denver will set an all time #1 warmest September if forecast temps hold. Previous record was +6.0 in 2015, we're headed for about +6.1 or 6.2. And Centennial, near where I live, only has records going back a few decades, but is now at +8.1 for the month. Bone dry too.

Well... it's Wyoming. Beautiful, very isolated outside of the few big towns (some would say very isolated, period), and one of the coldest places in the lower 48 in the winter. Much drier than you've experienced. The dilemma is that you want to find the "sweet spot" where there are just enough people to have jobs and other resources, but affordable (i.e. not Jackson Hole). These places do exist, you just have to look around some. Same issues with rural poverty that you'd find back East, tempered somewhat by the oil and gas situation.

Nope. (taking a tongue in cheek cue from the Northeast forums, the one word post :))

We finally got enough rain (I'm guessing 0.7") to keep the sprinklers off today. Feels better. Need more!

Thanks Don for chiming in on the Mtn West page... Out of curiosity I looked at Denver's climate pages for September today. Records have been kept for 148 years. We moved to CO in August 2010. Of the 30 daily record highs in September, 14 have been set since we moved here. That is COMPLETELY nuts. And the expected cold front will cool temperatures dramatically. To just a few degrees above normal. Wake me up when September ends.

It wakes up when we have something to talk about (drought and heat doesn't inspire much), but yeah, we could use a few more posters. And right, it's always better to be out enjoying it than inside kvetching about it online...

yeah, we're quite dry over the past month too, probably more like 0.5". Nonsoon weather for sure. Hope it materializes late. Where the heck is the moisture source for the KS/NE rains? It all seems to be coming from the NW- could that much Pacific moisture make it that far?

Interesting- no LSRs at all yesterday from NWS BOU, and no tornado reports to SPC. And I don't know about up in Estes Park, but it certainly wasn't cold at the surface or above in the Denver Metro area.

It was fun to hear the comparisons of the human-made and natural fireworks on 7/4. Pop, pop, pop bang pop pop... BOOOOOOMMMM. We got about an inch of rain on the day we had a 10% chance of precip, and nothing on the day we had a 70% chance. Ah, probabilities.

Also I have the luxury of parking in two places at work, one in a garage but more time consuming to get in and out, and another closer to the door but outside. If the SPC has us in a slight risk or greater, it's inside for me. That's worked pretty well for the past 5 years. At home, it's inside. 6 years ago we had 2+" hail in a surprise late Sept storm and our one outside car was, shall we say, made more aerodynamic by the weather, with $6500 damage to the house.

Welcome! 1. In my (fortunate and unfortunate) experience, you start to worry about dents when hailstones get to 1.5" or greater. and broken windows over 2". 2. Snow fell when temps were right around 32" so it probably insulated the plants somewhat. That's good, and often happens with late Spring snowstorms- a hard freeze without snow is much more damaging. 3. El Nino and some other stuff- raindancewx and Chinook have the good info on that.

So- this is really cool. Since early AM it struck me that it was more humid than normal (and definitely more than predicted). Dewpoints have been in the upper 50s all along the Front Range as far south as northern CO Springs, pretty unusual. Then when the clouds broke a couple hours ago, you could see the shear- clouds close to the ground are continuing to move from NE to SW, and higher clouds are moving W to E more or less. The temp has gone up 10 degrees in the last hour and a half, with dewpoints holding steady. And they just issued a tornado watch for the foothills on north and east, as far south as CO Springs. Naked eye observations FTW. We'll see what initiates.

Highest amount recorded was north of Kremmling at a mountain SNOTEL location with 13.3 inches. Many higher passes from I-70 north got 1-2 inches. It's unusual but not super-rare. This late spring/summer however (so far) is the coldest and wettest in our now 10 summers here. But it's supposed to be 90 by Thursday.

That got going pretty quick, in a pretty cool environment too. The north side of the Palmer Divide always seems like the hail capital of the world. Fortunately we live about 20 miles north of Castle Rock, so we miss the biggest ones.

Flying into DEN last night about 10 PM from the east, passed about 50 miles south of a cluster of severe thunderstorms over western KS that is still wreaking havoc this afternoon 400-500 miles further east. The lightning was not just continuous, but when I could count I saw between 5 and 10 strikes per second. Should have gotten a video- duh.

Craziest thing is that it's June, the water temp must be in the 50s, and Oakland Airport is in the middle of the freaking bay. I imagine that 100 feet above the surface it must have been 105+ degrees to create a surface temp that high on the ground!

I know, the storms last evening were quite high-based so the lightning display overachieved for the amount of rain! The flashes lit things up 20-30 miles away from the actual storms.

I just got back from a trip to the East Coast Sat-Tues. The Saturday severe thunderstorm absolutely nailed us with accumulating 1" hail. We lost 1/3 of the leaves on our trees and I picked up 4 big bags of pine needles this morning. Fortunately we have a steel roof and hail-resistant skylights, the cars were under cover, and we had procrastinated about planting the tomatoes. We did get rain the next two days too. Our yard is the muddiest it's been in June since we moved here in 2010. No need for watering for a while!

Yup, DEN looks like it will be a couple tenths either side of 51.6 for May, which would be about 5.5 degrees below normal, 7th coldest all time and coldest since 1995. Wet too, but not in the top 20. Funny also that the coldest temp this month was 30, so not that bad for plants, just consistently cool. Cool high temps are probably the biggest story. We only got into the 80s a couple times.

That was close, but no cigar. Two storms collided and there was briefly lots of rotation up above but nothing reported at the surface. Of course a million pictures on Twitter of wall clouds. Denver ATC earning their money this afternoon. EDIT: Guess there was a funnel cloud and a very brief touchdown E of the FTG radar site, fortunately nothing there but the prairie dogs.

Yeah we got 4.5" or a bit more at 5650 feet in south metro Denver. Latest I've seen measurable snow in 50+ years, spent mostly in New England (I have seen snow squalls in July in CO and New Hampshire, but that was on hikes). I was in southwestern Ohio 3 weeks ago and they hadn't been able to plow yet because it was just too muddy.

That's what I tell people not from here... if you want gloomy weather, come the first half of May. That's about the best and only chance you'll find 3 days in a row without sun. Midwesterners may feel at home, southern Californians are ready to jump out a window. Me, I just enjoy the moisture.

How about that! FC finally overperforms. We got about 4.5" as a final, with at least an inch coming in the early morning hours. Typical for the Metro area. Of course, DIA was once again a low outlier. Weird. I assume airport sites measure on a board, like the rest of us- or not? Could it just be that it blows away from the exposure?