00:00:00
Speaker 1: Dave Fraser, and he's on the phone. Hi, Dave Fraser.
00:00:03
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, Mandy.
00:00:06
Speaker 3: So what's the good news is where we can actually go outside and breathe today, which.
00:00:10
Speaker 1: Is nice, nice change.
00:00:12
Speaker 3: So what's on the horizon for We'll do the Front Range first, and then we'll talk about the areas with fires Western Colorado and stuff like that.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: Are we getting any rain? When is monsoon season starting?
00:00:25
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, let me take the air quality first. Yes, after ten days of having air quality alerts, you know, for the smoke in the air, which the last three days, especially yesterday was just kind of trapped. It wasn't like new smoke was pouring into the Front Range. It's just the smoke had pulled and got trapped, and so we needed to shift in the wind to flush it out, and that happened last night. We were expecting that, and our promise was that hopefully everybody could go out, take a deep breath and view the mountains again without having to have them obscured. And so that switching the wind to the north really made a huge difference in the air quality and how it looks outside. As far as moisture. The Front Range, we got scattered storms there's already a few that have come off the foothills. A lot of these, unfortunately, are drying out, so that leads to gusty wind and not as much rain. But as they pass by twenty five and go out onto the plains, there's a lot more moisture out there, and so the result will be storms. Like yesterday had a lightning wind, some small hail. We didn't have anything large enough to be severe and brief every rain, I said brief because the storms are moving quickly. You won't get a ton of rain in the rain gage, but you might get a good soaking for a few minutes. We'll keep that same chance tomorrow, and keep a possible chance on Friday, and then we start to dry out coming into the weekend, and that's when the heat comes back.
00:01:41
Speaker 3: So any hopes for the fires to get any significant rain, it doesn't sound like there's anything that's going to push any kind of moisture of any significance over the state.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: Am I wrong?
00:01:52
Speaker 2: No, you're not wrong. We just don't have a huge push. The monsoons have not kicked in yet, and don't look to for it at least another week. We generally don't anticipate them until a little more, a little closer to the middle of July, and so we might have to be you know, wait another week or longer and keep our fingers crossed that everything comes together. That would be helpful. I'm looking at an actual shower in a thunderstorm right now, a little shower and overbew up down at the Aspen Acres fire, there's a thunderstorm just north of Colorado City. They'll get some moisture out of that. Also looks like it might have a little hail in it. And the wind is gusting a little bit near the fire because I'm looking at humidity values down there and they're low, and so any showers that I can see on radar in the fire zone are probably not doing much as far as moisture, but they are at least bringing in cloud cover a little bit more higher humidity. The problem is they're gusting the wind, and that is always the challenge for the firefighters.
00:02:50
Speaker 3: That seems to be the major problem is the wind. I mean, it is just tearing across Colorado right now. Any relief for that in the near.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: Term, Yeah, it's gonna have and flow. I looked at wind speeds right now across the entire state, and we're in that ten to eighteen, there's some twenty threes, and then closer to the fires, we've got some gusts up to thirty two thirty three. The problem with the fire, as we've talked about, is it creates its own weather environment. So you've got this huge burn going on, and you've got the fuel and the air within that zone of the fire is rising and it's pulling in air from erratic directions, and that's the challenge for the firefighters. If it was a flat surface, it might be a little easier to predict what the direction the fire and the flames are going to go based on wind. But because of the elevated terrain and everything we talk about in Colorado, that wind is just so erratic that it just changes the perimeter zone to make it a challenge for them to kind of keep an eye on where do we attack today and do we have any progress on that line. They've done a good job. I think we're sixteen percent now this texture this sector.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: Asked a question they said was a dumb quiet, and I don't think it is at all. Can fire particulates almost act like cloud seating.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: Yes, one hundred percent. Yep, Sea salt, ash, anything in the air is what we call a condensation nuclei where the super cooled water loft attaches to that element and then it can help to create rain drops, and so yes, any of that can play into it. Now, there are other ingredients that need to come together. It's not a guarantee just because there's ash hovering over fire that it's going to generate rain, but if the rain process is underway, those particulates can help to enhance the formation of the rain.
00:04:36
Speaker 3: Okay, I got one more weather question from a text here, and it says weather question. I live in Nebraska and the night I guess last night we had a storm blow in from the west. When the eighty mile per hour winds actually hit, they were blowing from the southeast.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: How does this happen so quickly?
00:04:56
Speaker 2: It did. More than likely that storm was developing and it drew in. It's like a vacuum cleaner as it's growing and towering and becoming strong, and it was more than likely drawing in wind into its growing shaft out of the south and east, and the parent winds or an outflow boundary that was moving the actual storm may have caused it to go from east to west. We see that with outflow boundaries all the time. So you've got to think about it in two kind of references. One, you've got a driving wind that is pushing the storm, and so that's the track of the outflow boundary. Which way is that going? And then in the structure of the storm itself, as it's evolving and rising, it is also drawing in wind and most likely from an east southeasterly direction.
00:05:41
Speaker 3: So is that the same mechanism as when a wave builds where it pulls the water out from the from the shoreline and builds it into the wave while it's being pushed from the other side over the top.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's momentum release, right. The wave is being curled in, so you've got energy in there that is causing the wave to lift and rise and then it stands out and then the return to the water is energy coming back in for the next So it's like a it's like a rotation. Think about it that way, right, and the thunderstorm is the same thing. It's rotating. Instead of rotating horizontally, it's rotating vertically. And those are the things we look for when we talk about severe weather threats. We're looking for storms that are going to grow vertically, and within that vertical structure, you have wind that is causing it to spin and spin up, and that is generally a southeasterly to a southwesterly wind that causes that rotation.
00:06:32
Speaker 1: Is there anything in.
00:06:33
Speaker 3: The next couple of weeks that is going to give us any kind of relief or I mean, do you see anything on the on the near term or longer term horizon.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, two things I'll mention quickly. The long range outlook for the next eight to fourteen days continues to show above normal temperatures that can be just a few degrees. Certainly we've been popping some nineties. That's already going to average us up. And then we have, you know, slightly above normal chance for moisture. That doesn't guarantee you any soaking days, but it just says that the probability that will have storms. The other thing is that we talked about for months and months and months, is this super El Nino that could charge our and enhance our monsoons and then have a real impact on our upcoming fall and winter season. The computer models we're telling us that you know, generally we look for zero is flat. That's the temperature. Right. You go half a degree above, that's al Nina. You go half a degree below, that's La nina. They have impacts on our procast. The forecast is for a two point five degree above average. Who would be super charged? Well, we're starting to see some of the temperatures actually being recorded at close to the three or higher.
00:07:43
Speaker 1: WHOA, that's kind of a big deal.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: It needed Yeah, it is a big deal. It's worth all day to day. That's my job. Okay, overall could be good.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: All right, Dave Fraser, we appreciate you.
00:07:54
Speaker 3: You can watch him and as an incredible team on Fox thirty one, or just download the Pinpoint whether that I use all the time, and out of the four that I have.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: On my phone, it is always the most accurate. So there you go.
00:08:05
Speaker 3: All right, Dave, we'll talk to you next week. All right, thank you, my friend, that is Dave Frasier.
Speaker 1: Dave Fraser, and he's on the phone. Hi, Dave Fraser.
00:00:03
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, Mandy.
00:00:06
Speaker 3: So what's the good news is where we can actually go outside and breathe today, which.
00:00:10
Speaker 1: Is nice, nice change.
00:00:12
Speaker 3: So what's on the horizon for We'll do the Front Range first, and then we'll talk about the areas with fires Western Colorado and stuff like that.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: Are we getting any rain? When is monsoon season starting?
00:00:25
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, let me take the air quality first. Yes, after ten days of having air quality alerts, you know, for the smoke in the air, which the last three days, especially yesterday was just kind of trapped. It wasn't like new smoke was pouring into the Front Range. It's just the smoke had pulled and got trapped, and so we needed to shift in the wind to flush it out, and that happened last night. We were expecting that, and our promise was that hopefully everybody could go out, take a deep breath and view the mountains again without having to have them obscured. And so that switching the wind to the north really made a huge difference in the air quality and how it looks outside. As far as moisture. The Front Range, we got scattered storms there's already a few that have come off the foothills. A lot of these, unfortunately, are drying out, so that leads to gusty wind and not as much rain. But as they pass by twenty five and go out onto the plains, there's a lot more moisture out there, and so the result will be storms. Like yesterday had a lightning wind, some small hail. We didn't have anything large enough to be severe and brief every rain, I said brief because the storms are moving quickly. You won't get a ton of rain in the rain gage, but you might get a good soaking for a few minutes. We'll keep that same chance tomorrow, and keep a possible chance on Friday, and then we start to dry out coming into the weekend, and that's when the heat comes back.
00:01:41
Speaker 3: So any hopes for the fires to get any significant rain, it doesn't sound like there's anything that's going to push any kind of moisture of any significance over the state.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: Am I wrong?
00:01:52
Speaker 2: No, you're not wrong. We just don't have a huge push. The monsoons have not kicked in yet, and don't look to for it at least another week. We generally don't anticipate them until a little more, a little closer to the middle of July, and so we might have to be you know, wait another week or longer and keep our fingers crossed that everything comes together. That would be helpful. I'm looking at an actual shower in a thunderstorm right now, a little shower and overbew up down at the Aspen Acres fire, there's a thunderstorm just north of Colorado City. They'll get some moisture out of that. Also looks like it might have a little hail in it. And the wind is gusting a little bit near the fire because I'm looking at humidity values down there and they're low, and so any showers that I can see on radar in the fire zone are probably not doing much as far as moisture, but they are at least bringing in cloud cover a little bit more higher humidity. The problem is they're gusting the wind, and that is always the challenge for the firefighters.
00:02:50
Speaker 3: That seems to be the major problem is the wind. I mean, it is just tearing across Colorado right now. Any relief for that in the near.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: Term, Yeah, it's gonna have and flow. I looked at wind speeds right now across the entire state, and we're in that ten to eighteen, there's some twenty threes, and then closer to the fires, we've got some gusts up to thirty two thirty three. The problem with the fire, as we've talked about, is it creates its own weather environment. So you've got this huge burn going on, and you've got the fuel and the air within that zone of the fire is rising and it's pulling in air from erratic directions, and that's the challenge for the firefighters. If it was a flat surface, it might be a little easier to predict what the direction the fire and the flames are going to go based on wind. But because of the elevated terrain and everything we talk about in Colorado, that wind is just so erratic that it just changes the perimeter zone to make it a challenge for them to kind of keep an eye on where do we attack today and do we have any progress on that line. They've done a good job. I think we're sixteen percent now this texture this sector.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: Asked a question they said was a dumb quiet, and I don't think it is at all. Can fire particulates almost act like cloud seating.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: Yes, one hundred percent. Yep, Sea salt, ash, anything in the air is what we call a condensation nuclei where the super cooled water loft attaches to that element and then it can help to create rain drops, and so yes, any of that can play into it. Now, there are other ingredients that need to come together. It's not a guarantee just because there's ash hovering over fire that it's going to generate rain, but if the rain process is underway, those particulates can help to enhance the formation of the rain.
00:04:36
Speaker 3: Okay, I got one more weather question from a text here, and it says weather question. I live in Nebraska and the night I guess last night we had a storm blow in from the west. When the eighty mile per hour winds actually hit, they were blowing from the southeast.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: How does this happen so quickly?
00:04:56
Speaker 2: It did. More than likely that storm was developing and it drew in. It's like a vacuum cleaner as it's growing and towering and becoming strong, and it was more than likely drawing in wind into its growing shaft out of the south and east, and the parent winds or an outflow boundary that was moving the actual storm may have caused it to go from east to west. We see that with outflow boundaries all the time. So you've got to think about it in two kind of references. One, you've got a driving wind that is pushing the storm, and so that's the track of the outflow boundary. Which way is that going? And then in the structure of the storm itself, as it's evolving and rising, it is also drawing in wind and most likely from an east southeasterly direction.
00:05:41
Speaker 3: So is that the same mechanism as when a wave builds where it pulls the water out from the from the shoreline and builds it into the wave while it's being pushed from the other side over the top.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's momentum release, right. The wave is being curled in, so you've got energy in there that is causing the wave to lift and rise and then it stands out and then the return to the water is energy coming back in for the next So it's like a it's like a rotation. Think about it that way, right, and the thunderstorm is the same thing. It's rotating. Instead of rotating horizontally, it's rotating vertically. And those are the things we look for when we talk about severe weather threats. We're looking for storms that are going to grow vertically, and within that vertical structure, you have wind that is causing it to spin and spin up, and that is generally a southeasterly to a southwesterly wind that causes that rotation.
00:06:32
Speaker 1: Is there anything in.
00:06:33
Speaker 3: The next couple of weeks that is going to give us any kind of relief or I mean, do you see anything on the on the near term or longer term horizon.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, two things I'll mention quickly. The long range outlook for the next eight to fourteen days continues to show above normal temperatures that can be just a few degrees. Certainly we've been popping some nineties. That's already going to average us up. And then we have, you know, slightly above normal chance for moisture. That doesn't guarantee you any soaking days, but it just says that the probability that will have storms. The other thing is that we talked about for months and months and months, is this super El Nino that could charge our and enhance our monsoons and then have a real impact on our upcoming fall and winter season. The computer models we're telling us that you know, generally we look for zero is flat. That's the temperature. Right. You go half a degree above, that's al Nina. You go half a degree below, that's La nina. They have impacts on our procast. The forecast is for a two point five degree above average. Who would be super charged? Well, we're starting to see some of the temperatures actually being recorded at close to the three or higher.
00:07:43
Speaker 1: WHOA, that's kind of a big deal.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: It needed Yeah, it is a big deal. It's worth all day to day. That's my job. Okay, overall could be good.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: All right, Dave Fraser, we appreciate you.
00:07:54
Speaker 3: You can watch him and as an incredible team on Fox thirty one, or just download the Pinpoint whether that I use all the time, and out of the four that I have.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: On my phone, it is always the most accurate. So there you go.
00:08:05
Speaker 3: All right, Dave, we'll talk to you next week. All right, thank you, my friend, that is Dave Frasier.
