May Snows Bring Colorado Sighs, Weak Front Brings Us Heavy Rain Potential

Freshly fallen snow always looks beautiful, but I'm not sure that's the case today across Colorado's Front Range.  Sure, the pictures are pretty, but we're in the first week of May!  This should be the time of the year for Spring flowers and not winter snow shovels.  We begin with Marian Beauchamp's view in Evergreen at 7,000+ feet.

Marian welcomes the snow since Colorado has seen way below normal/average winter snowfall.  She says the birds are loving it, going crazy around her bird feeder.  Here are pictures from Jeff Hansen and John Lorenz around Boulder.

As I mentioned, it sure looks pretty.  And as Lee Zurik would say, "but there's more!" as this is from Barb Tidd in Salida.

Far less snow totals were reported at Denver and lower elevations, and most of this will be gone once the sun returns for this weekend.  Still, over 2+ feet at Estes Park is impressive and will help them as they head into the summer fire season. While this was going on, we were in the 80s with a severe weather threat just to our north.

A Tornado Watch covers much of central LA/MS until 11 PM.  Most of the severe storms will remain well north of Lake P.

 

The severe threat is expected to weaken and move to our east later tonight as a cold front approaches.  That front is likely to stall near us as it becomes parallel to the upper air flow.

WPC's 5-day rain totals exceed 5+" over most of SE LA/MS.  The key question is, where will the frontal boundary set up?  We'll see several rounds of heavy showers/T-Storms off & on through Sunday, making for a wet Mother's Day weekend.

 

It's noticeably cooler behind the cold front and much drier with dew points down into the 40s at Dallas.  With the slow movement of this front, it will take a long time for us to get into that air mass.

This front finally clears us by early next week, but it looks like the next 4 days will bring us some drought-busting rainfall.  Finally, my next podcast will air shortly.  It deals with this year's hurricane season, and you can view it by going to bobbreck.com and subscribing.  During the hurricane season, my podcast will be once a week and daily once any tropical threat develops.  For the price of a Powerball ticket, it's worth it.  Stay tuned!

Another May Front Brings Heavy Rain Potential

 The deeper we get into May, the weaker the fronts become in terms of bringing us cooler air. However, typically as they lose upper support, they stall over us creating a boundary will waves of heavy rains keep coming over the same tracks (training).  We all remember the 1st of the "hundred year floods" back on May 3rd 1978.  A slow moving cold front stall over the South Shore before drifting back over the North Shore the next day.  It resulted in rain totals of 15-20"+ causing extensive flooding of cars and homes. I'm not saying that will happen with this coming front on Thursday, but we need to pay attention for where the front stalls out.  WPC is giving rain totals over the North Shore in excess of 4-6"+ with generally 2-3" south of Lake P. (Orange-reds = greater than 5")

The upper pattern features a trough extending from central Canada back to off the Baja with a west to east flow over us.  That low south of California is cutoff from the main flow and won't reach us until Saturday. The upper part of the trough will bring us the cold front that will stall Thursday night through Saturday.  SPC does believe there is a severe weather risk, but they keep that area far to our north.  On top is today followed by Wednesday & Thursday.

The bottom view is valid for Thursday which lowers the severe risk but hints at where the frontal boundary will stall out.  It it's like the last front, it won't linger.  But look at the 70+ dew points to our west.

That is deep low level tropical moisture streaming out of the Gulf just waiting for a front and/or upper disturbance to provide the lift for heavy rains. Cloud cover is extensive to our west and we probably won't see much sunshine before Sunday.

We should have no problems on Wednesday with the rain threat increasing, especially Thursday PM into the weekend.  As my past posts have mentioned, it all about where (location) the boundary sets up. Tend to agree with the FOX 8 extended having a First Alert up for Friday & Saturday.

Combined with last week's soakers, our mini-drought should be over by Sunday.  Finally, I will have a new Podcast giving my views to the 2026 hurricane season on  Wednesday or Thursday.  To watch it, go to bobbreck.com and subscribe.  With the hurricane season just around the corner, if you want to know more than what the National Hurricane Center puts out, become a subscriber for $2/month.  That's one Powerball ticket.  Stay tuned!