June 2020 may have seemed like another hot mess of a month, and well, it mostly was. However, it had plenty of other memorable moments, too. Who can forget the historic derecho? How about the half foot of snow that fell in the Mountains in the middle of the month? Here’s a quick and colorful recap of our weather during the month of June and how it relates to climatology.

Top Weather Highlights of June 2020:

  • WHAT’S A DERECHO? The first ever derecho to impact Denver and Boulder in recorded history hit on June 6th, and boy did it hit HARD! Widespread 55 to 85 MPH gusts were reported up and down the Front Range and across the entire state of Colorado. Read more about this historic wind storm in our recap post.

Radar animation from derecho on June 6-7, 2020 with severe thunderstorm warnings annotated (yellow polygons) | Iowa Environmental Mesonet

  • SNOW IN JUNE! The very same cold-core storm system responsible for the derecho later brought a late-season taste of winter to the Mountains above ~8500 feet on June 8th and 9th. Several inches of snow fell at pass-level on Interstate 70. It was just a cold rain on the Plains.

  • THE ONSET OF THE SMOKE: The first wave of smoke from several large fires burning in the Desert Southwest engulfed the Denver Metro area around June 14th with periods of smoke persisting across the area the rest of the month. The added scattering of the smoke did make for some remarkable sunsets at times.

  • JET-FORCED RAIN TWO DAYS BEFORE SUMMER? An atypically strong  storm system for mid-June brought starkly colder and gloomy weather to the Boulder area on June 18th and 19th. The main forcing mechanism for the chilly rain was a 100 MPH jet streak aloft. This produced persistent bands of rainfall from Boulder into northwest Denver. Much of the Metro area remained fairly dry this day do to the localized nature of the jet-forced banding. However, Boulder reported more than an inch of rain.

  • ONE SUPERCELL & HAIL: Outside of the epic derecho day, it’s has been a fairly tame severe weather season in the Metro area so far. The partial exception to this was on Friday June 26th when conditions were primed for hail-producing thunderstorms to develop over our area. Ultimately only small hail was reported in portions of Boulder and western Denver.  A much more impressive supercell thunderstorm popped-up west of Castle Rock and remained intact for more than 10 hours covering 200+ miles as it moved southeastward. Watch the big cell form in the radar animation below from that day.

RELATED POST:
Colorado Monsoon Update: Southern portion of the state in severe drought, the monsoon may be delayed

June 2020 Recap Graphics:

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Feature image of the rainbow taken by Reddit user shrinkingmedic.

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BoulderCAST Team

This post had major contributions from at least two members of our team. The more meteorologists the better, right?

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