The large ridge of high pressure that has kept us dry and hot in the Colorado Front Range Mountains and Foothills for over a month is finally showing signs of loosening its grip on our weather. The Weather Underground forecast shows a trend towards cooler weather and perhaps some rain later this week and early next week:
This shows highs in the 60s F by early next week. If that comes true, it will be pleasant in Ned. The GFS MOS concurs with this:
Note that for 6 days straight we will have above climo chances of rain (lower red box) with near normal temperatures (upper red box). By the way, those temperatures are for Denver. Subtract about 15 degrees to get our highs and lows here in Nederland. The 6-10 day outlook from the Climate Prediction Center shows the cooler temperatures next week, even though it doesn’t look quite as moist:
September 1 will mark the beginning of meteorological autumn. Although September normally is a mild and dry month, we do start getting cold fronts and brief shots of cooler air. We normally get our first freeze by the third week in September. However, it is not until October that things really start to cool down around here. Over the past few years our first snow has been around Columbus Day. The trough of cooler air next week is just a small taste of the cooler autumn weather that is to come. Snow would be welcome, though.
Have you noticed that some of the Aspen are already starting to turn colors around Ned? This is early and likely due to drought stress on the trees. It will be interesting to see how much color we get this year and when the actual peak is.
Even though it will get cooler, our air quality will likely remain poor for the forseeable future.