Summary

• Mountain rain showers on Wednesday afternoon and evening
• Showers linger for I-70 & north on Thursday
• Friday through the weekend looks drier, still a chance for showers in southern mountains

Details

The mostly dry weather pattern we experienced during the weekend is coming to an end. Showers are covering the southern mountains today (Tuesday), and as this water vapor satellite image shows, additional moisture (blue shading) is moving toward Colorado from the south.

Expect rain showers to increase over the southern mountains by late Wednesday morning and midday, and then these showers will spread over all mountains by Wednesday afternoon.

Because there is an organized storm embedded within this surge of moisture, there will be enough lift in the atmosphere to keep the rain showers going on Wednesday night and even into Thursday morning. Most of the shower activity on Wednesday night, Thursday morning, and Thursday afternoon will be in the mountains along and north of I-70.

The moisture will dissipate on Friday, so look for drier weather Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, though it’s too early to provide a completely dry forecast for those days as there could be a shower over the higher terrain each day.

Looking ahead to next week, the weather models show more of the same with just enough moisture flowing from the southwest to create a chance of midday and afternoon mountain rain showers each day.

The good news about the weather pattern over the next 1-2 weeks will be cooling temperatures and rain showers over the Pacific Northwest, which could help to slow the fires that are burning over that region. At this point, it doesn’t look like the cooler air will make any intrusions into Colorado through the first week of September, but stay tuned because, of course, the 10+ day forecast will likely change.

If you’re curious about El Nino, I begin writing a series of articles on this topic two weeks ago. The first article talks about what El Nino is and why we care about it.

JOEL GRATZ