It's been a quiet seven days in Denver after a pretty active second half of July. The eastern plains have seen good moisture in the last week, but there too the storms have quieted in recent days. Seven day totals show the Denver area being quite dry as compared to much of eastern Colorado over the last week:

The storms have seemingly been replaced with smoke. The last several days have featured very smokey skies, at times being quite an irritant to the eyes and throat.

Unfortunately we'll have more smoke to contend with in the coming days. The latest HRRR model shows smoke from those western fires spreading across the intermountain west and into the western high plains, with quite a bit of smoke over Colorado over the next day:

Today is Denver's best chance of rain for the week, and it may not even be all that great. Nevertheless, we'll go with a 30 - 40% chance of rain by this afternoon for much of the northern urban corridor –– and then hope.

Morning convection up near Fort Collins and areas north should come to an end by midday, with storm activity increasing once more along the Front Range by early afternoon, then spreading east across the urban corridor and eastern plains through the evening hours.

The latest HRRR shows Denver's storm chances increasing around 1pm:

With a fair amount of activity on the old simulated radar by mid afternoon:

The severe threat is relatively low today, but not a zero chance of course. The far eastern plains will see the greatest chance for storms to become severe, but some hail/wind can't be ruled out. The latest HRRR shows the potential rain today... with best chances across the northern mountains, urban corridor, then heaviest totals across extreme eastern Colorado:

Temperatures should be a bit cooler today as well. MOS guidance has temperatures in the low 80s for highs in Denver with those storm chances.

For the weekend, we see temperatures climb back to the low 90s, with still some storm chances... but lower overall. The global models are quite dry over the next three days, but may be overdone there. I suspect we see at least a 20% chance of storms on both Saturday and Sunday in Denver –– perhaps we'll get lucky! Storm chances should remain a bit better across the north/north-central mountains through the weekend.