Meteorology is not an exact science...

This from the NWS crew in Pueblo.

"A VERY TRICKY FORECAST WITH MUCH DEPENDING ON WHICH WAY
THE UPPER LOW WOBBLES AND EJECTS ACROSS THE AREA."

Are we going to get a lot or a little snow?  We shall see.......

Blown forecasts

The National Weather Service forecast for Boulder yesterday called for a high of 60. Actual high: 49.

The forecast for today called for a 10% chance of showers. I wonder what the chance of rain all day was? We got nearly .25 inch.......and it rained for much of the day.

Better link to NCAR website

http://rap.ucar.edu/weather/

This is a fantastic website that I highly recommend.

Chilly!

Like many of you, I expected that this cold front would bring us some rain. It did snow a little in the mountains, but it turned out that the down sloping winds negated the precipitation that was forecast. It still cooled off a lot!

Hot!

High pressure+downsloping winds=85 degrees and 12% relative humidity in Boulder! Quite the shift from the beginning of the week. It's great weather for drying clothes....

Happy Equinox! The exact moment is actually this afternoon.

Thunder-grapuel on Saturday

I was up at Beaver Reservior (just west of the Peak to Peak Highway) on Saturday afternoon. Not only did it snow (thanks to a passing cold front), but at one point we heard quite a bit of thunder and little styrofoam-like pellets started to come down--sort of a cross between snow and hail. Those little pellets are called graupel and they are much less common than snow or hail. More info here on how it forms. Very interesting stuff.

Albedo observations

I had a couple of real-life albedo moments on Saturday while painting a house in Dillon. Observation 1: Wet, white primer has a high albedo. The hot sun reflected right back onto us.
Observation 2: Black socks (no shoes) have a low albedo. My feet got really hot in the sun until I took off my socks.

California Fire Images

Check this out from NASA. The prevailing westerlies are bringing that smoke to Colorado.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/index.html

Informative article about scattering

I was trying to get a better handle on scattering, especially given the changes in our sky due to the smoke from the California fires and came across this.
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/corfidi/sunset/

California Fires....

Huge fires are burning in California right now. Fires in Southern California are often driven by Santa Ana winds. These hot, dry, downsloping winds are a firefighter's nightmare. As the air descends off the mountains, adiabatic warming leads to increased temperature and decreased relative humidity. The fuels in this area are very dry and have accumulated for many years, since most of this area has not burned in a long time. It's a combination that is leading to very intense fires.

The westerly winds that prevail in our mid-latitudes are bringing the smoke to Boulder from both California and Colorado's western slope.