6/25/22 Saturday 7 am

A few sneaky showers developed yesterday. The models did a poor job of picking up on them. The dewpoints are slightly lower this morning to start the day but moisture will be on the increase as we approach the afternoon. Isolated showers will develop once again, it is difficult to predict exactly where.

Sunday will bring more widespread showers. The models are not in agreement with the start and stop times. Most of the models show showers continuing on Monday. The Euro is the outlier bringing showers to end by Monday morning. Based on that I put the maps in motion using the GFS model, it has been doing better with the afternoon showers lately and has been more consistent from run to run for the last day compared to the Euro. These are 3-hour increments starting at noon today and ending Tuesday at 6 am.

Here are the forecast amounts from the models during that same time period. There is good consistency in some areas and poor consistency in others. There is definitely an easterly bias for the heaviest precipitation.

Euro

NOAA’s WPC

NOAA’s NBM

Canadian

GFS

My next update will be on Sunday. Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/24/22 Friday 6:30 am

A few nice rounds of thunderstorms made their presence felt across the area yesterday afternoon. In the areas that did get rain 0.25 to 0.60 inches of rain was common. A note about rain totals, I am going to post monthly totals next Friday, July 1st.  It is going to be pretty incredible because I have two areas that are already at historic levels for June–around 6 inches! One of them is Gem Village.

I was in downtown Durango securing weekend rations and as usual, I had to go to four (of four) stores and I still did not mark everything else off the list. When it first started raining it literally felt like Orlando, Florida in the summertime with the heat and humidity. Fortunately, when I got back home we had some heavy rain and the temperature plummeted, which was a nice relief. I have decided I like the sunny morning/rainy afternoon set-up. I have been spending a lot of time outdoors so it is nice to have it sunny for part of the day.

Showers today may develop but should be highly isolated. More storms will fire Saturday afternoon, still isolated, but more widespread than today. Sunday still looks like rain will fall most of the day and be more widespread, with some nice wetting rains throughout the forecast area. This will carry on through Monday.

Late yesterday, the Euro extended came out and as I expected, the good news does not end anytime in the foreseeable future.

Here are the extended totals for now through the end of the month.

Here is a look at now through the end of July

Here is the positive anomaly for July. This shows the excess rainfall amount above average for July.

 I have really enjoyed some of the still pictures people have sent me. I am still looking forward to seeing some videos. I will be shooting some myself soon, I am waiting for some equipment that is supposed to be here on Tuesday.

I wanted to shoot video yesterday because it was raining as hard as I have seen it in 5 years (but only for 15 minutes). I actually do have that video from August 2017, I will be re-posting that when I launch the channel. We got 2.3 inches of rain in less than an hour and the streets turned to streams in my subdivision. I actually got some regional and national views on television with that one.

I will post again on Saturday and see if I can refine the Sunday forecast a little clearer. Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/22/22 Wednesday 1:30 pm

Showers should build in later in the day and throughout the evening. It is challenging to have the Grand Junction Radar down. We complain about it, but it is certainly better coverage than we get from ABQ.

It still looks like the southern portions of the forecast area will be favored tonight into tomorrow morning. Afternoon storms should break back out Thursday and Friday. It seems every time I post the short-term totals something changes. Some of the models changed quite a bit in 12 hours. I learned my lesson, again.

One thing that did not change is an emphasis on widespread heavier rain throughout the day on Sunday. I am going to let whatever happens in the short term happen. I will post again on Friday and we will take a better look at how June ends and July begins.

I am getting a lot of positive feedback about my upcoming YouTube weather video channel. As I said it will probably be a little while before I have enough content to launch it. Hail storms, lightning, heavy rain, strong winds, and heavy flowing streams all make great content. In the coming days, I would love for people to send me what they see. Before sending it make sure you are comfortable with me sharing it publicly. For best results, try to take the video horizontally (full screen). Try for at least 30 to 60 seconds per clip, I can stitch together pieces if necessary. You can send the videos to me at durangoweatherguy@gmail.com  Feel free to use my personal email address as well if you already have that saved in your address book.

Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/22/22 Wednesday 6:15 am

Not a lot has changed in the big picture. It still looks like we will get somewhere between decent rains and downpours between now and the end of the month, depending on which model is your favorite. Technically, the transport mechanism for the monsoonal flow is not traditional. Nerdy types could argue that this isn’t “it”, it is not THE monsoon.  I refuse to split hairs on this. I don’t care what “it” is, I like “it”.

I had planned to do a mid-morning update after the high-resolution models were generated, but I decided not to. NWS has no radar until at least July 1st because of maintenance issues. So the mesoscale stuff is literally out the window right now. They are doing their best with high-resolution satellite as an alternative. In hindsight, this scheduled maintenance would have been done at a perfect time if June was more “June-like”. Anyway, if you are noticing radar outages on your apps, that is why.

There is an impressive amount of moisture building into the forecast area and it will remain for a couple of days during the first wave. During the monsoon season, I talk about Precipitable Water values a lot. Also known as PWAT, this is a measure of the total amount of precipitation that would fall from a virtual column of moisture if it all fell at once. It is often measured in a percentage of the climatological average. This morning’s readings are already pushing 200% of average in some of the forecast areas.

Regional view showing what is here now, and on the way.

I put the maps in motion to track this moisture between now and Friday at 6 pm.

Before I post the overnight model runs I want to insert my standard caveats. I am not a big fan of trying to time every drop or flake of precipitation. I don’t usually like to break up the precipitation events because I think there is a certain amount that will fall in total. Timing out each wave and lull is tricky and usually inaccurate.

That being said, I am going to go against everything I normally say and post the forecast totals for the first wave of precipitation. At the moment anyway, it looks like we will have the first wave start today and end Friday or Saturday. There will be a few lulls. Over the weekend I expect pop-up showers Saturday afternoon with the second wave of more steady rain coming Sunday through Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

Here are the forecast totals for the first wave.

GFS

Canadian

German

NOAA’s NDFD

NOAA’s WPC

Last but not least, the Euro came in with a very impressive run across the southern portions of the forecast area.

I will update again later this afternoon. Thanks for following and supporting the site!

Yesterday was easily the most beautiful day of the spring and summer so far. As I mentioned yesterday, that nice weather is not going to last. Some of the models show pop-up showers starting late in the day today. I think that the precipitation will hold off one more day before we drop back into a wet pattern that will last a very long time. Significant rains will start up again on Wednesday with reinforcing shots on Thursday. Perhaps a brief lull on Friday morning before we reload for the weekend. The next break looks like Tuesday morning, That seemed to be a good time to get out of the raft and check the forecast totals.

Here are the latest seven-day precipitation forecasts ending Tuesday, June 28th. A lot can happen between now and then but all of the models are pointing to this pattern change and there is very good agreement among the models in their forecast totals.

Canadian

GFS

Euro

German

NOAA’s WPC model

NOAA’s NBM model

If these totals verify, most of the forecast area will be near all-time historic values for June precipitation. Values like that usually only occur when there is a rare early-season recurving Pacific Tropical Cyclone.

I mentioned a “new development” earlier. I am going to launch a weather video channel on YouTube, more than likely by mid-July. I have big plans for it during the upcoming winter. I am also going to be upgrading DWG mobile command so I can bring more of the weather to you. In the meantime, I thought I might work out any of the bugs during the monsoon season. So send me your weather videos, and with your permission, I will post them along with my own on the channel. I may not pick every video that comes in, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

My next update will be Wednesday mid-morning. I am going to wait until the morning high-resolution models come out to attempt to better time the onset of the precipitation tomorrow.

Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/20/22 Monday 7:20 am

What a great weekend!  Totals ranged from an inch or so on the low end to nearly 5 inches! Widespread amounts over 1.5 inches were the average throughout the forecast area. But we have 11 days more left in the month and a decent amount of rain left to fall.

Here are the overnight 10-day forecasts through Wednesday, June 29th.

GFS

Canadian

Euro

Those are my only 10-day models. Here are a couple of 7-day models.

German

NOAA WPC High-Resolution

It is a little too early to sweat the details at the moment, but it looks like the fun starts back up on Wednesday.

Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/19/22 Sunday 6:45 am

I had been craving humidity for a while, I know, it sounds crazy unless you live in a climate like this. But this was what I needed. The rain has been great. If not another drop fell today or the rest of the month, many locations would be above long-term June averages.

Fortunately, we don’t need to worry about that because more rain will fall today. The rest of the month is starting to look downright interesting. Some of the models are really piling on for the last 10 days of the month. It looks like the weather will keep me busy!

Here are the latest totals showing what is left to fall between 6 am Sunday and 6 am Monday.

GFS

(NOAA) NDFD

(NOAA) WPC

Canadian

Euro

German

Some of the models are keeping some showers going on Monday. Others are refiring storms Monday afternoon. Most models do agree on more rain at some point next week and weekend. Don’t worry about that right now, enjoy the rain!

Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/18/22 Saturday 7:15 am

Right now I have to say right on track to slightly above major model forecasts. This is good because as I have said in the past it takes a while to prime a dry atmosphere. And the expectation has always been that the heaviest precipitation would fall from Saturday afternoon until Sunday night/Monday morning.

We are trending above the forecast from many of the models with the exception of the crazy German model.  Areas near Purgatory are considerably higher than the forecast where 0.50 inches have already fallen in Lakewood Meadows. One of my favorite sites is NW of Hermosa. It is a very well-equipped weather station and I want to visit the site before winter. That station reported 0.41 inches so far.

As soon as I hit enter on my keyboard I got two email reports of 0.40 inches from Durango in town. This is considerably higher than the model forecast from 24 hours ago and very encouraging.

The last interesting thing is that the moisture, so far anyway, is trending towards the Euro solution. It is not yet deep enough to push into the Central and Northern San Juans–we’ll see.

Since the Euro is my best friend right now, let’s put the maps in motion now through Monday morning in 6-hour increments.

Here is the latest forest for precipitation in that time period from just a couple of models.

Euro

NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center in-house blended model (the WPC)

As long-term followers know, I believe that each storm has a certain amount of precipitation within it and I am not a big fan of trying to time every drop/flake.

I would love to hear storm totals on Monday morning. If you are tracking totals feel free to send them, but what I really want is event totals on Monday.

My next update will be Sunday morning. Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/17/22 Friday 4:30 pm

It is encouraging before a widespread precipitation event, to see the models “peak out” for the week. That has been the case with all of the models with the exception of the German model. I was actually relieved to see it pull back because it has been off the rails (too high) the last several runs.

Because we are so close to the event, I was able to include several additional high-resolution models, which handle terrain a little better.

GFS

Canadian

Euro

German (morning run)

German (afternoon run)

The German model generates throughout the day than many of the models

Here are some of the high-resolution models that are heavily relied on by the National Weather Service

NAM 3km high-resolution model

This model only extends 60 hours, the precipitation total is through Sunday night.

NOAA’s NDFD 2.5 km high-resolution model

NOAA’s NBM (National Blend Of Models) 2.5 km high-resolution model

These are the highest forecasted totals I have seen for this particular event from these two models.

My next update will be out Saturday morning. Thanks for following and supporting the site!

6/17/22 Friday 5 am

For the “I will believe it when I see it crowd” it looks like the much-touted pattern change bringing sub-tropical moisture into the area is definitely going to happen. The models have kept a wide range of totals for the last several days, with the GFS and Canadian models being on the lower ends–but still several categories higher than long-term (120+ years) climatological norms.

Regarding the lower totals from the GFS and Canadian, in my experience, the models are shutting off the precipitation too early. Let’s say on the very conservative side, we have “just” an inch or so of rainfall over the next couple of days. Just because the spigot turns off (sub-tropical flow),  You have to take into consideration that there will be “leftovers” in the atmosphere in addition to the wet ground evaporating back into the atmosphere which will cause afternoon thunderstorms for a few days next week.

I have pointed this out many times in the past. Prolonged heavy snow makes it easier for more snow to develop, and prolonged heavy rains attract more rains. That is another reason I said we may look back at this event the first week or so of July and say “I guess that was the start of the monsoon”.

You tuned in this morning for the latest totals, so let’s get to that. These were the latest totals at the time of writing (3:45 am). I cropped the maps for “game time” viewing. If you are new, this is what I usually do immediately prior to a heavy precipitation event.

Canadian

GFS

NOAA/Storm Prediction Center’s WPC high resolution

Euro

German

I will do an update on CAPE after 9 am. I still have some concerns about thunderstorm development this afternoon. I will also post an afternoon update with the latest model data. Thanks for following and supporting the site!