mayjawintastawm

Really interesting to see what's happening today. Plenty of moisture in place, but storms are much more discrete, with just 8 or 9 cells (several supercellular) on the FTG radar at this time, most all of them separated from one another by large distances. In between, nothing at all. Course, outflow boundaries crashing into each other could change that in a hurry, like last night. The last 2 days there was much more coverage with not as many discrete cells. Are the discrete cells sucking all the moisture away from the rest of the area?

Yup, that was it. Core of the hail passed just barely north of us near 225, but we got some pea-sized hail along with an inch of rain in 40 minutes or so. That poor owl got soaked, but didn't complain about it.

Gorgeous supercell just about on top of us right now. Too bad I was in my car on the way home and couldn't take pics- very photogenic. Hail is a' comin'. There is a great horned owl in one of our trees sitting on the only branch that isn't moving.

Had a nice wet microburst in Aurora yesterday around 4:30 with our great thunderstorm that finally provided some good water. For about a minute I couldn't see across the street. Fortunately there wasn't much of anything nearby that could be damaged by the winds that were clocked at 61 mph at Buckley AFB. There was scattered street flooding, and some cars stuck in the water in Montbello.

Looking over climate stuff... DEN has had 0.79 inches of rain May 15-July 15. May 15-July 14 only 0.58. Normal in that period is around 4 inches. Gotta be close to a record if anything like that is ever kept. I know other areas (downtown etc, and MBY- we've had about 2.5 inches in that time) have had somewhat more, but still.

The monsoon is slower, shorter, weaker and less reliable up here, so 100 F temps are more spread out, basically June 20-July 20. Hopefully getting toward the end, though I wouldn't rule it out till after about Aug 20. https://www.weather.gov/bou/local_climate

And it's raining. Hi-res has been all over the place the past 3 hours. Places the 17z had zero had 1" predicted on the 19z, then the 20z is completely out to lunch with nothing north and east of about Littleton. I wonder if it had been paying too much attention to the convection 50 miles to the east, that has fizzled with rapidly recovering dewpoints. So who knows. Just want to get rid of the crispiness for a few days. The cool air is welcome anyway!!

NWS has a flash flood watch for the Denver Metro this afternoon. Latest HRRR model has most of the metro area completely dry, with almost all the instability and QPF to the north and east. It's quite cloudy and quite cool, making me think it will stay bone dry here (again). We'll see who wins.

Last two days were looking promising a few days ago for the Denver Metro, but the precip forcefield continues, with nada since Sunday's localized PM storm. Officially, July precip at the airport is 0.02 inches. At least we broke the string of 95+ F days. Tomorrow we resume. We'll see about next week.

nice... areas north of Boulder did well. Hopefully the rest of us will get in on the action today. Air is pretty moist and winds mostly upslope, so need a trigger. Can't wait for the real monsoon to decrease the smoke in the air.

Hot out there. Fun fact from BOU forecast discussion: a heat burst last night from a collapsing thunderstorm raised the temp in Julesburg, CO (far NE corner) to 97 degrees at 1:42 AM. Would have been interesting but not comfortable to be there. Meanwhile there is a nonzero chance to tie the all time Denver high of 105 F. Glad Bike to Work day was yesterday and there were clouds for the PM commute home! EDIT: Aaand we tied it at 2:10 PM. Now 101 and windy. Positively dessicating.

yeah - crazy afternoon. We had racquetballs at our house and there were baseballs just a couple miles east and west. I posted in the severe discussion a while ago. One thing that's weird is that all the storms are not hitting any of the official reporting stations, so it looks as though there's nothing going on if that's all you look at. I imagine someone has worked out the kinetic energy of a 3" hailstone falling at terminal velocity, and I imagine it's pretty scary when you compare that with what it takes to break a windshield, a skylight, or a skull.... ouch.

So sorry to hear about SE Texas... again!!! Can't get a break. Meanwhile, the Front Range and adjacent Plains are having a sudden hail-fest, after training hailstorms (yes) last night up the I-76 corridor. Today we have a couple of almost-tornadoes near Hudson and Keenesburg and baseball sized hail in the densely populated South Metro area. 2 inch hail at my house, 3 inch hail only 2 miles in both directions. Not home to provide pics, but there are plenty on Twitter if you like broken windshields. Yikes.

Blech. And this past hour, an 87 degree F dewpoint spread (95/8) at Buckley AFB, not far from where I work. Kind of surprised we didn't hit 100 this weekend at one of the metro measuring stations, though the earliest 100 F on record at DEN was 6/11 just a few years ago. Hope the monsoon pans out this year. With less western ridging lately, looks a bit more promising.

Looks like things may be converging north of Denver from Longmont up through Greeley and Fort Collins in an hour and a half or so... should be interesting. Edit: farther northeast and quicker than I thought... severe storm NE of Greeley went from nothing to severe in 25 minutes.

I know... on Friday my flight from the East Coast took a very circuitous route down over NM and west almost as far as Durango to avoid a wall of t-storms (the yellows and reds on your precip map) and get to DEN, and it was amazing how little snow remains in the northern NM mountains and the San Juans. Looks like mid July snow-wise, and it isn't green.

Seems to be a precip forcefield today around the Denver Metro. Rain everywhere except within the circle of 470 and the NW beltway. Hopefully that will fill in.

Wow. From its last image and track of the storm, it looked like it took a hit from both the outer and inner eyewalls, and some of the stronger parts of both at that. And it's up on a fairly high hill. Would have been interesting if there was a functioning wind sensor at its position. NWS radars are built to take 145 mph gusts right?

Flash Flood Warning for the Guajataca Dam was just canceled... one small bright spot

Lots of the terrain on the northern half of the island is steep ravines that feed quickly into the coastal plain. The rivers are super-flashy, though historically used to having lots of rain during the summer. I would imagine the ravines got completely full and probably scoured out whatever was there (hopefully few buildings and people, though I worry that was not the case), carrying everything in their path down toward the coast. Given the steep terrain, how could a sensor be positioned to measure both low flows and these crazy numbers that are being reported, without being submerged under rushing water and debris?

I was in MA, in kindergarten at the time. Our teachers had pinhole projectors for it, and I do remember being underwhelmed, though a little apprehensive/scared before it happened. Then it was kind of like "When's the eclipse coming?" "It's over." "what???"

Will be in Hastings, NE, hopefully in between shortwaves. Anyone from here targeting NE? The whole dang Denver metro area is COMPLETELY out of eclipse glasses and the ones I ordered from Amazon last week never came. Maybe some places along our trip route might have some, but feeling a bit out of luck there at this time. Everyplace I've tried has just sold out when I get there. Wish I could make some- a longtime ago I used to use 35mm film...

Booked perhaps the only room under $500 left within a couple hours of totality in central Nebraska... lucky that we'll be taking a family trip to Chicago at the time anyway, and a relatively small detour. There is NEVER traffic around where we're staying, but I expect there will be considerable traffic anyway. We'll have about 80 miles to drive the morning of, to get to a good place (targeting Hastings., will stay away from I-80 till it's done). Think I'll go find the Nebraska DeLorme atlas or something in case back roads are needed. Have not tornado chased, but I imagine it will be a similar kind of thing (though the only danger will be from the other cars!!) Looked like Omaha still had a few reasonable rooms left a couple days ago. More traffic issues there for sure.

Thinking the farther north and west you are, the less likely to encounter clouds and/or haze to decrease the drama. We'll be taking my daughter to college in OH and driving either from or to CO, so either I-80 in NE or I-70 in MO (totality covers its ENTIRE LENGTH in MO) are a good bet. It'll be around 1 PM CT... are PM thunderstorms a good bet in MO? NE tends to dry out a lot in August.