A quick update this morning to look ahead to the weekend and what looks like another period of mild weather back in the forecast as we head into next week.

A fast moving system will bring a round of moderate snowfall to the high country tonight and Saturday, but mostly wind for Eastern Colorado. A few showers may spread east of the mountains on Saturday, but aren't expected to amount to much.

The hourly planner for Denver shows a chilly day the chance we see some rain and snow showers around:

Little to no accumulation is expected with this system east of the mountains. A Winter Weather Advisory will go into effect tonight for the central and northern mountains, with locally a foot or more of snow possible for the highest elevations across northern Colorado:

Windy!
All of Eastern Colorado is under a High Wind Watch from this evening through Saturday evening. While the mountains get some snow, we will (mostly) just get the wind. Gusts to 65mph are possible across the Plains on Saturday, with gusts upwards of 80mph expected for the Front Range foothills.

Here's the hourly wind outlook for Denver, with the dots indicating wind gusts, and bars indicating windspeed:

The map below shows the extent of the strong winds expected with this passing system. The yellows are high wind advisories, the bright pinks are Red Flag Warnings (many of the same areas covered by the High Wind Watch will also be under Red Flag Warnings), and the purples are the Winter Weather Advisories in place for the mountains:

Warming for next week
After a chilly and windy day Saturday ridging will begin to establish itself again across the region, with the peak of the ridging looking to move overhead next Wednesday.

You can see this well in the Euro 500 mb forecast. The blues overhead Saturday evening will deliver the mountain snow and wind, but a big ridge is forecast to takeover the middle of the country next week:

For temperatures this all shakes out as the following, looking like 30s and 40s for many of us on Saturday, but by next week it could be we see a few 70°F+ temperatures across the region!