Get ready for another unseasonably chilly day across the Front Range with low clouds and cooler temperatures lingering. We also discuss Category 5 Hurricane Lane which is heading towards Hawaii.
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There is actually an atypically busy weather pattern happening right now for the northern Rockies. Several factors are at play:
- A cut-off low is present across Idaho at 500 mb with a trough extending into northern California. Across eastern Colorado, a shortwave disturbance is departing eastward this morning into Nebraska (below, top left). This system could spur a few light rain showers briefly this morning, but overall, most areas will be dry with low clouds and smog.
- A jet streak is positioned from Nevada across Utah into Wyoming which has provided additional lift for showers and storms over the last 36 hours, mainly across western Colorado where Flash Flooding Watches have been and still are posted (below, top right). Grand Junction received 0.75″ of rain yesterday. This is 3x more than the city has seen in total since June 1st!
- The cooler airmass across eastern Colorado will loosen its grip somewhat today (below, bottom right), but it won’t head out entirely until tomorrow. This means one more day of sub-normal temperatures…
- Mid-level monsoon moisture remains high and with broad-scale lift in place, overcast skies will dominate today (below, bottom left)
GFS forecast at noon today for 500 mb vortiicty (top left), 250 mb wind (top right), cloud cover (bottom left), and 800 mb temperatures (bottom right).
We expect that clouds and cool airmass will keep things relatively stable across the Plains, but a few isolated storms will form across the higher elevations. These storms will be moving eastward and may produce a brief shower or two across the Denver Metro area by late afternoon and early evening. Don’t cancel your plans. Any rain cells will be short-lived and relatively weak as they move out into the more stable air. Some sun may be possible this afternoon if the westerly flow aloft mixes down. Highs today will be in the middle to upper 70’s.
NOTE: The models did not do a great job at all handling yesterday’s less-than-soggy set-up. While most parts of the Metro area saw light rain and drizzle during the day (0.02″ reported at BoulderCAST Station), we missed out on the more widespread moderate rainfall that a majority of the models were indicating. The pattern is fairly similar today, so we are hedging our forecast on the drier side of the models.
Sunshine and drier conditions will accompany a warm-up tomorrow heading through the weekend as downslope flow takes over. We’re about to enter a warm stretch (finally!?)…
Major Hurricane Lane bears down on Hawaii
It’s usually an easy job to work at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu. Tropical cyclones rarely threaten our island state and there aren’t many other landmasses around for which they are responsible for. This normality is not the case this week with Category 5 Hurricane Lane edging towards Hawaii as we speak with 160 mph sustained winds. An infrared image from GOES-West is shown below. Very impressive, indeed!
Infrared satellite image of beautiful Hurricane Lane south of Hawaii, taken by GOES-West.
The official track from NOAA has the storm slowly moving northwestward and potentially making a landfall somewhere in Hawaii Thursday evening or early Friday. While the storm will be weakening during this approach, Hawaii rarely sees actual hurricanes get this close. It’s still a really big deal! There has only been a few documented hurricane landfalls over the last 70+ years in the Aloha State. Our team discussed the reasons for this on a podcast back in 2015.
Just out of curiosity, I tried to find a few weather observations from buoys that Lane passed over recently, but this reminded me that we don’t actually have any buoys taking weather and sea-surface observations near where Hurricane Lane is right now (there are plenty of ship observations, though!). The map below shows all the available moored weather buoys. Hurricane Lane is in a dead zone! And if you’re wondering what’s up with the equally spaced vertical lines of buoys south of the hurricane spread across the Pacific, that is the TAO array. As you might expect, there is BIG (government) money set aside for monitoring ocean temperatures along the equatorial Pacific…
Map of weather buoys
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