Issue Date: Friday, July 6th, 2018
Issue Time: 11:00 AM MDT

Summary:

It was a very humid day for many in Colorado on Thursday, with dewpoints near 60°F in many locations across the plains. As expected, this led to an outbreak of strong storms with some heavy rain across the Central Mountains, Palmer Ridge, Southeast Mountains, and Southeast Plains, in some cases providing a major boost to firefighting efforts. The Spring Creek, Weston Pass, Adobe, and Chateau fires all received a bit of much-needed rain, although flooding and mud flows were fortunately not reported. There was even a rare high country tornado reported, with video and pictures circulating of a tornado in Park County, not far from the Weston Pass fire!

Perhaps even more impressive were the storms that developed yesterday evening along the Rampart Range and Pike’s Peak. Rainfall reports were widely in the 0.25” to 1.50” range around the Colorado Springs metro area, per CoCoRaHS this morning. An amazing 4.33” was reported 3.2 miles north of Fountain, CO, although this may be of questionable validity given the lack of flood reports. Other top reports from around the state include the following:

• 2.57” at Stonington (8.6 SE), Baca County
• 2.27” at Canon City (0.7 SSE), Fremont County
• 1.61” at Kiowa (12.7 ENE), Elbert County

Surprisingly, flooding was not reported on Saturday, although no doubt there was minor street flooding and field ponding under those strongest storms. For rainfall estimates in your area, check out our State Precipitation Map below.

Click Here For Map Overview

Issue Date: Thursday, July 5th, 2018
Issue Time: 9:30 AM MDT

Summary:

Mother Nature didn’t want to be left out of the Independence Day celebrations, so she brought her own fireworks to the party. Around lunchtime, isolated thunderstorms began to develop, first over the higher terrain along/east of the Continental Divide, and eventually over the lower elevations of eastern Colorado during the early-to-mid afternoon hours as daytime heating initiated the convection. Most storms produced plenty of virga, light rain, and gusty winds, but during the evening and nighttime hours, a few stronger, slow-moving storms worked off of increased moisture to produce periods of heavy rain over portions of the Front Range, Urban Corridor, Palmer Ridge, and Southeast Plains. Heavy rain reports from El Paso County indicate that 1- 2 inches of rain fell in the Colorado Springs area late in the evening from a batch of slow-moving thunderstorms.
From CoCoRaHS and NWS observers, here are the rainfall “winners” from yesterday:

1.96 inches: El Paso County
1.92: Cheyenne County
1.35 inches: Baca County
1.18 inches: Larimer County
1.03 inches: Washington County

No flash flooding was reported yesterday, but street/field ponding likely occurred under thunderstorms producing heavy rain. For a look at precipitation estimates in your area, please see our State Precipitation Map below.

Click Here For Map Overview

Issue Date: Wednesday, July 4th, 2018
Issue Time: 9:30 AM MDT

Summary:

Yesterday started with abundant sunshine and blue skies across the majority of the state as high pressure built over the region, allowing temperatures to climb quickly during the morning hours. An upper-level disturbance rounded the high pressure ridge and impacted Colorado during the afternoon/evening hours, triggering isolated showers/thunderstorms. The best moisture, relatively speaking, resided in northeast Colorado, where dewpoints in the 50s provided fuel to the best couple of storms of the day. The strongest storm produced one severe wind report of 59 mph, 9 miles WNW of Westplains (Weld County).

Overall, the atmosphere was very dry below 500 mb, and most showers/storms resulted in virga and gusty winds with very little rainfall reaching the surface. No flash flooding occurred yesterday. For a look at precipitation estimates in your area, please see our State Precipitation Map below.

Click Here For Map Overview

Issue Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Issue Time: 09:25 AM MDT

Summary:

For the most part, Colorado stayed pretty dry yesterday as arid and warm desert southwest air limited atmospheric moisture available for afternoon thunderstorms. The first afternoon storms fired over the Raton Ridge by 1:30 PM. These storms did not produce much rainfall with dew points behind the dry line close to 30F. A bit later, a line of convection popped up along the dry line over the Southeast Plains. Fast moving storms and drier lower levels kept rainfall amounts below flood threat criteria and produced some gusty winds. An ASOS near Lamar reported a gust of 62 mph around 4:30 PM. Radar rainfall estimates were up to 0.5 inches/hour with a CoCoRaHS station south of Kim recording 0.33 inches. Elsewhere, a couple garden variety thunderstorms were able to move off the mountains into the more moist Northeast Plains air. The heavier rainfall was very localized, thus no flooding was reported. Lastly, a some thunderstorms initiated along a boundary over Denver at 9 PM. The highest reporting ALERT gage was over Aurora where 0.55 inches of rain fell. Generally speaking, rain totals were only in the 0.2-0.3 inch range, but it was a welcomed surprise for all the Metro area lawns.

Flooding was not reported on Monday. To see how much precipitation fell in your area, scroll down to the State Precipitation Map below.

Click Here For Map Overview