mayjawintastawm

9 hours ago, Chinook said:

Rainfall in the Denver area maxed out where there was a narrow area of thunderstorms across the north metro, maybe with hail.

Mayjawintastawm, so you are saying the first snow is in September? I would think you are thinking of October.

 

Not here, but up on Mt Evans > 11K ft.. There was a poster who mentioned a dusting on Pikes Peak a few days ago.

Will be interesting to see tomorrow morning- guessing based on temps down here in Denver there will be widespread snow above treeline. Typically the first real snow is around 9/7 (though it often all melts) so we are a little late but not much.

On 9/7/2023 at 11:27 AM, smokeybandit said:

I volunteered to chaperone my son's multi-day outdoor education program the beginning of next week.

Rain and mud and 6th graders. Fun times! 

Did the same when my kids were that age back in MA. Most (wet) fun we had in years. They still talk about it 15 years later.

Been a week so I thought I'd post something. Late summer here has been so hot lately. Noticed that this August was the first since 2018 that was not in the top 6 warmest for DEN, though still quite warm (especially the end!) and, for some, trending drier again east of the Divide and south of FoCo. Early Sept lately has been nuts compared to climatology. Thought highs in the upper 90s were done... not yet.

Note to self: stratus + cold front=no daily rise in temps and no instability, no matter what forecasts say. Upslope was minimal this time.

Still plenty of time to get good rains later this afternoon and overnight. Super hard to forecast- if there had been even a tiny opportunity for convection it would be raining very hard somewhere, but as a few forecasts hinted last night, convective temps were not a slam dunk. Still, the few showers we've had around here have been efficient rain producers, and a few areas have had a lot so far especially north of town. Closest PWS to me has 0.47" so far today. It's pretty chilly!! 61 here near DTC.

I guess there are no California posters in this subforum- posting here because "mountain west" may include the San Gabriels etc. Lots of totals from the last 36 hours in southern CA over 5 inches- half their yearly rainfall. Flash flooding, road washouts. Palm Springs is in particularly rough shape. Anybody from that area?

Several PWSs over 100 degrees right now, closest one to me reading 98. Hottest day of the year so far in my neighborhood.

On 8/8/2023 at 8:05 PM, Chinook said:

Maybe a double tornado, closer to Goodland

 

That cell was spawning tornadoes for about 2 and a half hours, according to NWS storm reports. Our friends north of Burlington whose ranch is right on 385 were maybe 5-8 miles from it and saw the tail end. Scary. It would have passed right over their house had it kept going.

Severe thunderstorm with 1.25 inch hail zeroing in on DIA. Should make some interesting pics.

3 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

I've gotten an inch total with the last 3 days of storms.

I'm about that or a little more given PWSs in my area, probably 0.7" Monday, 0.2" Tuesday and 0.4" yesterday. Nice! Should have planted shrubs when we were thinking about it earlier in the summer. We probably won't get another year like this for a long time. I'm guessing this is a really nice opportunity for the trees in the Front Range metro to recover from the last couple of tough years and the fall colors will be remarkable.

More scattered and not as heavy tonight. DIA didn't even get anything measurable. I'm guessing we got 0.2" here. On the good side, I got a new Ambient Weather station for my birthday a few days back to replace an aging AcuRite one, so once I can get up to my roof to install it, we'll have some good data from here. My current rain gauge got stuck and hasn't cooperated since the heavy stuff started in May.

Looking like we'll have a week of monsoon, finally. Will be a nice change, though I can't complain too much about summer heat this year. Things have been pretty dry around here the last two weeks, with the sprinklers on regular summer mode to keep things from getting too crispy. The mosquitoes are slowly diminishing, which is nice, though I imagine they'll pick back up in a week or so.

We probably had the most cycles of rain-thunder-sun-rain that we've ever had today, like 6. None of the storms lasted more than an hour, most like 10-15 minutes. Moving really fast!  Weird. Started at 5 AM, also very weird for here.

Just looking once more at climate stats as we hopefully near the end of this crazy period... Centennial Airport had 8.99" of rain in June, and over 17" since April 22nd. Just nuts. Only time I've experienced this degree of rain before was when we lived in MA, and had 15" in June of 2008 or 2009. The tomato plants grew to 8 feet high that summer.

We threaded the needle and stayed dry, though I wish we hadn't, given the enormous number of large fireworks people are lighting off in our neighborhood. Didn't need that roof, anyway...

Then of course after I wrote this, we got deluged by close to an inch of rain with some hail after 11 PM. These nighttime downpours are something I have not experienced much before this year.

A big hail season this year! Fortunately nothing destructive so far as I know today.

Picture from Coors field from a couple hours ago. Crazy thing is that the first picture I found was a similar view from June 28, 2016. This week tends to be quite the severe weather week for Denver, year over year.

32 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Just .25"/.5" hail here. Though enough to clog gutters and making my yard a river again. I was eyeing that cell though willing it die out, which it did.

Whew! good news. Looked like it was making a beeline for Parker, then after it crossed I-25 it fizzled. We ended up OK too, the hail somehow went one way or another over our neighborhood.

On another note, now that we've had a fair number of tornadoes in Eastern CO this year, it seems like the vast majority, even big ones like how this started out, come and go within a few minutes/miles. Long- or even medium-track ones are rare indeed. Even in the Northeast where I grew up it's not uncommon to see them go 5-10 miles when they do occur, although it's rare to see any at all.

F**K. PDS tornado warning in Highlands ranch moving toward Parker. Smokeybandit, get inside and down in the basement!

15 minutes ago, mob1 said:

PDS warning with this 

That's just south of my house. We are about where the L in Centennial is on that screenshot. I'm at work now but hairy indeed. That area is basically a big suburb nested within a high-tech megaplex with multiple malls, etc.

Surprisingly, given all the chaos last night, no COCORAHS site got more than 3" in the extended Metro area. I wonder if there were a few spot areas that got more, as the scope of flooding in some spots made it look like more. We got just over a half inch of rain.

What a difference an outflow boundary makes!! Radar loop (which I can't figure out how to post) the last hour is impressive.

well, that's exciting.

West toward the population centers, not much of anything happening, and dewpoints are slowly dropping. Just a couple tiny lonely cells. Might be a nothingburger for most of us unless the front/outflow boundaries move west and south.

SPC has upgraded most of the Front Range and adjacent Plains today to Enhanced Risk, based mainly on large hail. Looks like 4-10 PM will be the time to watch. Keep those cars inside and plants under cover.

I'm probably around 13" for the year, with 12" of that in the last 60 days. Malaria ain't far off....

Wish I had a great big tank underground to store some of this. By August I'll probably be watering 3x a week again.