The State of the Atmosphere: Sunday, July 16, 2017

As we discussed in Friday's update, Denver's precipitation chances would decrease as we headed later in the weekend and into early this coming week.

Yesterday we saw some shower activity across the greater metro area early in the evening, but for the city this did little than help cool us down. Those to Denver's north and west saw a bit of measurable rain, while the most appreciable rainfall fell across southern Colorado:

WeatherBell Anayltics

Temperatures today are hovering around 90 across the Denver area, with diurnal thunderstorm activity popping across the high country, and a few isolated storms across the far eastern plains.

Denver's precipitation chances are very low through the remainder of the day, and only tick up a little to start the week. Look for highs Monday through Wednesday to be quite warm along the Front Range, with 10 to 20% chances for storms across the metro area each day.

By Thursday the ridge shifts a bit further east, and with that we should see a better chance of storms across much of the state. Again, how this plays out for your back yard in particular we'll have to see, but overall should see better storm coverage and a few degrees knocked off daily high to end the week and start next weekend.

Ridge shifts east of Colorado on Thursday and should help promote tropical flow of moisture into the state | TropicalTidbits

For precipitation... still some differences between the GFS/EURO. The EURO has been consistent in keeping the best rainfall totals over the next 10 - 16 days south, west, and southeast of Denver (basically everywhere but northeast Colorado) while the GEM/GFS look better for northeast Colorado. As we've been saying for some time, let's just get that monsoonal flow going, then focus on those details.

The GEFS mean precipitation forecast for the next 16 days looks like this (its operational looks even better):

WeatherBell Analytics

The EURO mean also looks better than its recent deterministic runs, with a broad-brushed above average precipitation outlook for all of Colorado over the next 16:

We'll see! Stay cool the next few days, and hope for some rain to end the week.