Published Thursday at 12:20 pm.

The cold front that moved through on Monday night is going to make a third appearance over the next couple of days.

If a front passes from north to south across an area it is a cold front. What a lot of people don’t know is that if that same front moves back north over the same area, it is a warm front. If the same front then moves back over the area a third time from north to south it is a cold front again.

Confused?

Check out the surface maps going back to Monday night.

This is Monday evening with the cold front to our north. First of all, this is called a longwave trough because it stretches across the entire Continental United States.

This is very late Monday night.  The cold front has moved south of our area.

During the day on Tuesday, the front became a stationary front well south of our area.

Tuesday night the front was dragged even further south as the trough deepened over the Midwest and East-Central US.

By Wednesday at noon, the trough had deepened into the Gulf of Mexico and south of the US border.

By Wednesday evening the front started to move north into our area again as a warm front.

By late last night, the front had moved into the northern portions of our forecast area.

Here is the latest. The front is now a stationary front on the northern edge of our forecast area.

The front is forecasted to move back over the area as a weak cold front which will trigger scattered showers over the higher elevations. If we are lucky, the mid-elevations and a few locations a bit lower may get some scattered showers as well. Any snow accumulations during the day will be at or above 10,000 feet. The snow levels will drop at night so there is a chance some very light snow could fall down to around 7,500. This will happen only if the showers develop after around 2 am. Thunderstorms may be possible, with the best chances from Montrose to Ouray.

This is another fickle system and I don’t expect much out of it. In a better precipitation year, I would call this a nuisance system. Since we need every drop of moisture we can get right now, I will refrain from using that terminology.

Here are precipitation forecasts through late Friday.

Canadian

German

GFS

Euro

As you can see, the models are all over the place with where and how much precipitation will fall. The last few systems that have moved through have finished up quicker than the models forecasted. I would not be surprised to see that happen by Friday afternoon.

We should have two nice days over the weekend and during the day on Monday before a new trough moves in from the west late Monday or early Tuesday. This system looks like it will be colder and wetter.

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