Speaker 1: Our weather guru. He is Fox thirty one's chief meteorlogist,
Speaker 1: Dave Frasier. Dave, did Wyoming actually get blown off the
Speaker 1: map yesterday?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's always a tough state, one of the windiest
Speaker 2: in the country. And boy was at Hollowing yesterday, especially
Speaker 2: along the I eighty corridor, so they got the front
Speaker 2: of it. Although impressive wind gusts up high in the
Speaker 2: foothills west of Denver with some eighty eighty fives. I
Speaker 2: think there was even a peak at ninety outsres.
Speaker 1: That's like beyond a tropical storm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's beyond hurricane force, which is at a minimum
Speaker 2: seventy five miles per hour. So you know, the good
Speaker 2: thing is it's generally a lot of those gusts are
Speaker 2: over the pass. Is not good if you're traveling. You know,
Speaker 2: think of like Bertha Pass trying to get up to
Speaker 2: win a park. So it can be a challenge for travelers.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of people that live up at
Speaker 2: that ten thousand foot level, and the gusts are occasional.
Speaker 2: So you know, when we talk about wind, there's the
Speaker 2: constant wind, the movement, and then the gus occasional burst.
Speaker 2: But if You're out and about and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: boom something, they hitch you in the back. You know,
Speaker 2: gus to win thirty forty five miles proud. There's nothing
Speaker 2: more annoying. And I think when it comes to weather factors,
Speaker 2: wind is by far the most annoying.
Speaker 1: That is A Rod made the exact same point yesterday.
Speaker 1: He is in complete agreement with you about that. I
Speaker 1: want to know about this polar vortex, and so does
Speaker 1: one of our texters, Mandy. Does Dave foresee a polar
Speaker 1: blast coming around Christmas time to New Year's That from
Speaker 1: Tom and Loveland? What are we looking at this polar vortex?
Speaker 1: Because I'm actually going to be in Ohio, so I'm
Speaker 1: afraid I'm driving into the polar vortex.
Speaker 2: You are? You are? And again that's a cute name,
Speaker 2: if you will. It's an attention grab or it's basically
Speaker 2: a giant area of low pressure. We see these spinning
Speaker 2: up near Hudson Bay in Canada, and they're deep low
Speaker 2: pressures and they can whip up cold and they can
Speaker 2: whip up wind. And right now, the next shot of
Speaker 2: very very cold air is going to slip east of Colorado,
Speaker 2: the northeast corner of the state may get a little
Speaker 2: bit of that, meaning their temperatures may be a little
Speaker 2: lower than ours. Here along the front range, we're looking
Speaker 2: very warm and dry. But I yes, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: I think if you are heading east in the next
Speaker 2: ten days, at least you're heading into the colder, the
Speaker 2: wind eer and the higher probabilities of running into snow
Speaker 2: in those areas where we're on the flip side of that.
Speaker 2: I got nothing the next chance, I see. I just
Speaker 2: told Arod, maybe keep your fingers crossed, keep your toes crossed.
Speaker 3: The twenty third we might get a little something.
Speaker 2: But between now and then, run in twenty degrees above
Speaker 2: average and dry.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this one, this text message, This is all
Speaker 1: it says, Mandy. Exclamation point. Please tell Dave that my
Speaker 1: daffodils are coming up. We've got weather confused plants out there.
Speaker 3: No way to send me.
Speaker 2: A picture to the station. I would love to get
Speaker 2: some type of a gardener or somebody with a green
Speaker 2: thumb to be to explain that that is in fact true.
Speaker 2: Do they think it's a second spring? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not the biggest when it comes to green thumb.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know how to take care of my
Speaker 2: lawn and my trees and my shrubs when it comes
Speaker 2: to plants like that. That's not my forte. But I
Speaker 2: would love to see that picture if in fact that
Speaker 2: is Troy. Wouldn't that be a sign of coming changes.
Speaker 1: I have some daffodils in my yard, and they were
Speaker 1: there when I moved in. I've just never gotten rid
Speaker 1: of them. They just randomly come up. I mean sometimes
Speaker 1: if we have like three warm days in January, my
Speaker 1: daffodils will come up. So it's always like a mystery
Speaker 1: as to when the daffodils will decide to make it
Speaker 1: appearance and where they are. They get no sun, so
Speaker 1: they literally grow to be like three inches high. They're
Speaker 1: the saddest, little cutest little daffodils you ever saw in
Speaker 1: your life day. They're just like the little daffodils that
Speaker 1: could and I probably should like dig them up and
Speaker 1: transplant them. It's kind of become like a fun thing
Speaker 1: for me to note when this was going to happen.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll bet, I'll bet just on our little conversation,
Speaker 2: your text line is going to be flooded with daffodil
Speaker 2: experts telling you exactly.
Speaker 3: That maybe they are.
Speaker 2: Maybe they are sensitive to just temperature alone, and they
Speaker 2: just sound smart enough to realize it's December.
Speaker 3: They're just like, hey, it's warm enough, let's pop our
Speaker 3: heads up.
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, there you go. I just got this
Speaker 1: text message. It says, Mandy, I don't plan on murdering someone,
Speaker 1: but if I did, it would be on a windy day.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this text has this question, manby, what happened
Speaker 1: last night? At nine forty five last night, the temperature
Speaker 1: was fifty nine degrees with wind out of the west.
Speaker 1: By ten thirty wind shifted out of the east and
Speaker 1: the temperature was thirty seven degrees. What went on there?
Speaker 2: That was our cold front that came in last night.
Speaker 2: So remember here along the Front Range, if you have
Speaker 2: a west northwest, even southwesterly wind, you're coming up and
Speaker 2: over the foothills the mountains to the west and then downsloping,
Speaker 2: and that heats the air coming into Denver in the
Speaker 2: Front Range.
Speaker 3: So think of it as a hair dryer.
Speaker 2: Being turned on. The air drives out, the air, temperatures
Speaker 2: go up. So while we were in the fifties late
Speaker 2: last night, we I had a little bit of a
Speaker 2: westerly component to the wind, and the cold front came in.
Speaker 3: And the reason you'll know a colt.
Speaker 2: Front has gone by is the wind will generally turn
Speaker 2: to an east northeast or even a straight northerly direction.
Speaker 2: And when that happens, now we're tapping into much colder
Speaker 2: air sitting north of Colorado, across the Great Plains and
Speaker 2: into our Canada. And that's what happened last night. Temperatures
Speaker 2: today are down a little bit from where we were yesterday,
Speaker 2: not dramatically, but down a few degrees. So temperatures today
Speaker 2: will be in the fifties, but tomorrow we race right
Speaker 2: back to about sixty four sixty five, which is twenty
Speaker 2: degrees above normal, ten away from the record, thankfully, but yeah,
Speaker 2: we evan flow with the wind. Wind is king in Colorado.
Speaker 1: I have a very specific question. Can you explain the
Speaker 1: mechanism of why when the wind comes out of the
Speaker 1: south it gets colder. It seems like it should be
Speaker 1: the opposite.
Speaker 2: It depends on what time of the year it is.
Speaker 2: You know, when I say wind is king, wind is
Speaker 2: king as it relates to topography and how it moved
Speaker 2: around those graphical features that we have foothills, Palmer divide, mountains, hodback.
Speaker 2: All those terms you hear us use when is king
Speaker 2: when it comes to differences in elevation and how storms
Speaker 2: are transported, and when is king depending on direction. And
Speaker 2: sometimes you can move a wind across a snowfield that
Speaker 2: can transport colder temperatures to you. So if you have
Speaker 2: a southerly wind, generally, if you're down here on the
Speaker 2: south side of town, you're going to get a downsloping
Speaker 2: component as it comes up over Monument Hill and he
Speaker 2: heats a little bit. But if there's a ton of
Speaker 2: snow to the south and east out near say Elbert
Speaker 2: or Lineman, or over the Eastern plains, and you have
Speaker 2: a suddenly wind, you can transport colder air towards you.
Speaker 2: And so those are factors that we have to take it.
Speaker 2: But generally a southerly wind will be on the warm
Speaker 2: side for most of the front range, barring any snowfields
Speaker 2: or cold pockets. Sometimes Lineman is one of the fastest
Speaker 2: places to fall off on the Eastern plant because they're
Speaker 2: on the very end of the Palmer divide, so their
Speaker 2: elevation drops off and all the coal there pours right
Speaker 2: into Linemen, just like it doesn't Gunnison. The high mountain
Speaker 2: valleys are prone to cold there because once that coal
Speaker 2: there pours in, it's trapped down in the lower high
Speaker 2: valley locations and you can't scour it out. Linen is
Speaker 2: in factor.
Speaker 1: You know, I never really thought about like how much that,
Speaker 1: you know, And I'll use the word valley even though
Speaker 1: like I live in a hilly neighborhood and you go
Speaker 1: down a hill and go back up, like in the morning,
Speaker 1: I can feel myself walking into that cold sink.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: You don't.
Speaker 1: You don't realize how significant that is. But it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a degree change that is significant enough that I
Speaker 1: can feel it as I'm walking. And I always I
Speaker 1: just think that's like really cool.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm proplored.
Speaker 1: Everything's flat right.
Speaker 3: Right right, No, And and like I said, you know, the.
Speaker 2: Topography elevation changes the little I call them nooks and crannies, ye, Carilado,
Speaker 2: because that's basically what it is. And you know, I
Speaker 2: live south of Colorado towards Castle Rock, and I'm a
Speaker 2: thousand feet up in elevation, as are you then downtown Denver,
Speaker 2: and yet everybody in the country thinks of Denver's the
Speaker 2: mile high city. Yet Denver is surrounded to the east,
Speaker 2: the south, and the west by higher terrain, and that's
Speaker 2: where a good chunk of people live. And so those
Speaker 2: variations and in the weather center I bought twenty five
Speaker 2: years ago when I moved here, I bought a three
Speaker 2: dimensional map of Colorado to be able to study the
Speaker 2: features here, the mountain ranges, the different names for the ranges,
Speaker 2: how they.
Speaker 3: Sit, where they are, and stuff.
Speaker 2: And every time we hire a new employee onto the
Speaker 2: Pinpoint Weather Team, I show them that map and I say,
Speaker 2: study this and understand how those features and different wind
Speaker 2: directions play into upslope, downslope where there can be cold pockets,
Speaker 2: where there can be warmer, where there can be more snow.
Speaker 2: And it's really a great visual When you look at it,
Speaker 2: you can see, oh yeah, now I know why that's cold.
Speaker 2: And look how low it is compared to the terrain
Speaker 2: around it.
Speaker 1: And that's why I thought thirty one's weather. That's the
Speaker 1: best weather. And that's why Dave Frasier is our favorite meteorologist.
Speaker 1: Dave good to talk to you, my friend. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you next week.
Speaker 3: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: Enjoying the warm weather heading your way. Sure will thank
Speaker 2: you day, Fraser