Issue Date: Saturday, July 25th, 2015
Issue Time: 9:00 AM MDT

Summary:

More subtropical moisture was pulled into Colorado yesterday, resulting in fairly abundant high- and mid-level clouds across the High Country and portions of the lower elevations of Eastern Colorado. The cloud cover limited instability, which resulted in showers and weak thunderstorms that didn’t produce much more than light rain. The exception was across far eastern Colorado, where a bit more sunshine combined with a surface convergence zone to develop stronger thunderstorms. One thunderstorm in particular reached severe threshold by producing 1.5 inch hail, 12 miles N of Burlington (Kit Carson County).

As far as rainfall observations are concerned, most locations reported less than 0.1 inches of rainfall. Cheyenne County had the highest report of the day at 1.68 inches. Some of the other higher reports include:

Summit County: 0.39 inches
Gunnison County: 0.38 inches
Lake County: 0.27 inches
Kit Carson County: 0.25 inches
Ouray County: 0.21 inches

No flash flooding was reported.

Issue Date: Friday, July 24th, 2015
Issue Time: 9:00 AM MDT

Summary:

Upper-level high pressure built overhead yesterday, filtering drier air into much of Colorado. With drier air in place and no obvious disturbances to trigger storms, the result was a mostly sunny and hot day. Southern and Central Mountains experienced a couple isolated, weak thunderstorms which produced more gusty winds and lightning than rain. Near the CO/KS border, a few isolated thunderstorms were generated by a surface trough and a corridor of low-level moisture. These storms produced the best rain of the day, but the real story was the large hail. Check out the following storm reports:

2 inch hail: 7 miles SSE of Bethune (Kit Carson County)
1.75 inch hail: 6 miles S of Burlington (Kit Carson County)
1.0 inch hail: 5 miles SSW of Burlington (Kit Carson County)

Due to the large hail that fell from the storms near the CO/KS border, those precipitation estimates have been contaminated and a bit over-estimated in the Storm Total Precipitation map below.

No flash flooding was reported.

Issue Date: Thursday, July 23rd, 2015
Issue Time: 9:00 AM MDT

Summary:

Following the active day on Tuesday, Wednesday was much quieter as subsidence and drier air worked across Colorado. The day was characterized by rising temperatures and mostly sunny skies, but a few thunderstorms were allowed to develop as daytime heating warmed the higher terrain. A couple of thunderstorms drifted eastward over the lower elevations of Eastern Colorado, producing brief light-to-moderate rainfall. Most locations that did receive rain yesterday reported less than 0.05 inches, with the exceptions being eastern Larimer County (0.17 inches), northern El Paso County (0.16 inches) and eastern Jefferson County (0.07 inches).

No flash flooding occurred yesterday.

Issue Date: 7/22/2015
Issue Time: 9:00AM

Summary:

A potent disturbance skirted across Colorado early on Tuesday afternoon bringing with it thunderstorms. Most of the action was confined to northern and central Colorado, with areas within the Grand Valley all the way east to the Northeast Plains receiving over 1 inch of rainfall. The most impressive rainfall of the day was likely on the border of Douglas and El Paso county. There, a report of 2.75 inch per hour rainfall was received. Only a few miles to the north, one of our meteorologists noted some significant flooding on I-25 near Larkspur. Remarkably, these downpours appears to have been very spatially confined as the highest reports within several miles of there were only 1.0 – 1.3 inches.

Elsewhere, 1 or more inches of rainfall was officially tallied in the following list of counties: El Paso, Weld, Delta, Gilpin, Morgan, Prowers, Douglas, Arapahoe and Otero. Much of the rainfall fell over rural regions, and was not reported (but see our rainfall estimated total map below).

Aside from flooding, mud flow was reported in Rio Blanco County during the late afternoon. A brief tornado touched down in Weld County, hail just under 1 inch fell across El Paso County, and finally, a wind gust up to 70 mph was observed in Adams County around 3PM.

Be sure to check out our radar estimated rainfall totals, below, to determine approximately how much rain fell over your locale. Note that the rainfall totals in Douglas County appear to be significantly underestimated, and will require gage-based adjusting. This typically takes a few hours to as long as a day to complete.