After a very low-key Thursday, the atmosphere quickly rebounded on Friday. A wide variety of weather was observed across Colorado, ranging from beneficial rain showers in the southwest to severe thunderstorms<\/span> in the northeast. Shower and weak storm activity across the San Juans and Southwest Slope netted anywhere from 0.5 to 0.75 inches of rain. No flooding was reported in that region. Meanwhile, east of the Divide<\/span>, afternoon thunderstorms got going in earnest after 2PM. Several rounds of storms resulted in very heavy rainfall in Elbert, Arapahoe, Morgan, Sedgwick and Phillips counties. Social media reports described very impressive rainfall near Fort Morgan, where up to 4 inches fell (unofficially). Officially, several CoCoRaHS<\/span> observations in the regions tallied around 2 inches. Flooded fields and roadways around the Fort Morgan area led to dangerous driving conditions for several hours. In addition, tornado warnings were hoisted as several storms showed strong rotation. While no tornadoes were actually observed, 3.5 inch hail was reported near Wiggins (Morgan County). Other hail reports, exceeding 1 inch, were received from Elbert, Bent and Otero counties. Finally, a thunderstorm wind gust of 65 mph was observed in Bent County, and likely accompanied many other stronger storms yesterday.<\/p>\n Another interesting observation from Friday is the extremely large gradient of precipitable water<\/span> (PW<\/span>) values. By late morning, PWs ranged from about 0.5 inches in Boulder to 0.95 in near Colorado Springs to 1.2 inches near Pueblo. This is about the highest disparity that we have ever noticed and certainly helps to explain why thunderstorms had such a difficult time maintaining strength in the Front Range and Urban Corridor.<\/p>\n For an estimate of 24-hour rainfall that occurred in your area, please check out our radar based map below. Caution: radar-estimated rainfall can be strongly over-predicted in regions where hail falls.<\/p>\n
![\"STP_snapshot_20150808\"](\"https:\/\/archive-coftb.dewberryanalytics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/STP_snapshot_201508081.png\")
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