Speaker 1: Box thirty one's chief meteorologist, Day Fraser, Ainy Day Fraser,
Speaker 1: what about this.
Speaker 2: Dug and gloomy skies today? What's happening?
Speaker 3: Weeah that nice refreshing change, thanks for cool front last night.
Speaker 3: So instead of baking at ninety five like we did yesterday,
Speaker 3: we'll only pop out in the in the mid eighties today.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the benefit of the dark and gloomy
Speaker 3: skies out there. But the price that comes with it
Speaker 3: is a chance for showers and thunderstorms, some of which
Speaker 3: will have lightning and wind and hail typical threats, and
Speaker 3: so we'll watch for that this afternoon. But the humidity
Speaker 3: level is higher today, I'm sure everybody by Colorado standards
Speaker 3: just about that, and that can lead to heavy rain
Speaker 3: but hopefully beneficial range. So there's a there's a trade
Speaker 3: out right, Maybe keep the hail on the small side.
Speaker 3: We don't get any damage, but we can ring out
Speaker 3: some rain this with this higher humidity, and that's what
Speaker 3: I'm hoping for.
Speaker 1: Well, let me give out the text number if people
Speaker 1: have weather questions. Now's the time, five sixty six nine.
Speaker 1: Oh is who you text? Yesterday? I was driving home
Speaker 1: and I was all excited because I was driving through
Speaker 1: really like health rain, right, good rain, and then drove
Speaker 1: into my neighborhood and not a drop and I was like,
Speaker 1: dang it, now I've got to water on my plants.
Speaker 2: So how scattered are these showers?
Speaker 1: When are we I mean, when are we going to
Speaker 1: see like a solid line where I know I'm going
Speaker 1: to get rain?
Speaker 2: When am I going to get that?
Speaker 3: You know, when we're dealing with storms of convective nature,
Speaker 3: you know, it just depends where the first ones go up.
Speaker 3: And then we always talk about outflow boundaries. When the
Speaker 3: thunderstorms are kind of dying, they can throw a gush
Speaker 3: of wind across the ground and that can be a
Speaker 3: focal point for additional development. Those things, even the highest
Speaker 3: resolution models don't do a good job picking up on,
Speaker 3: so you kind of have to watch the radar real time.
Speaker 3: I will tell you if you're going to get your
Speaker 3: rain up and down the front range. As I'm looking
Speaker 3: at our high resolution models, it's going to start. The
Speaker 3: clouds are going to delay the start because they're delayed
Speaker 3: the heating. So obviously heating is a component to get
Speaker 3: the storms going. I'm thinking we're going to be somewhere
Speaker 3: in the two to three o'clock start. I think the
Speaker 3: best window goes till about five o'clock, and by five
Speaker 3: to six they're starting to push past the airport and
Speaker 3: go onto the eastern planes. So if you're going to
Speaker 3: get the rain, you're going to have to see it
Speaker 3: by five to six. If you haven't seen it by
Speaker 3: five to six, your only hope would be that an
Speaker 3: outflow boundary comes back in your direction, But chances for
Speaker 3: that in this type of environment are going to be
Speaker 3: on the very low side. So that's your window coverage
Speaker 3: is about sixty percent, Mandy. So I know a lot
Speaker 3: of people think that that means though there's a pretty
Speaker 3: good chance you know that you'll get rain, it's decent.
Speaker 3: It means a lot more of us have a better
Speaker 3: chance of seeing it, but it's not one hundred percent, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So we got a couple of questions, and funny,
Speaker 1: I have three different questions from three different textures, and
Speaker 1: they are all about the use of the word land spout.
Speaker 1: Let me read them all to you in one one
Speaker 1: little fellow swoop here, Hi, Mandy, can.
Speaker 2: You ask Dave what a land spout is? Mandy?
Speaker 1: For Dave, difference between a land spout and a dust devil.
Speaker 1: Mandy Weather Wednesday question. Please ask Dave when and why
Speaker 1: did they start calling tornadoes land spalves. So let's clear
Speaker 1: the air on landsfalts, shall we yep?
Speaker 3: So let me start with the lower end, the dust devil.
Speaker 3: The dust devil is exactly that. As the ground heats,
Speaker 3: the air rises, and if it heats a finite area,
Speaker 3: you can get the air to rise and kind of
Speaker 3: swirl a little bit. Generally, a dust devil doesn't do much,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't connect to the upper atmosphere, and it
Speaker 3: only lasts as long as it's over that heated source
Speaker 3: and then it dies away. So if a dust level
Speaker 3: comes up and it moves over an area that's cooler,
Speaker 3: it's just going to die out. The next one would
Speaker 3: be the land spaluve and land spout tornadoes, and that's
Speaker 3: the frase you'll hear us use are defined as tornadoes.
Speaker 3: It's just that they form in a different way. So
Speaker 3: a tornado is generally associated with a large thunderstorm or
Speaker 3: a cumulomimous cloud. The whole storm is rotating and the
Speaker 3: tornado drops from the center of the storm down to
Speaker 3: the ground. And that rotating column of air can be violent,
Speaker 3: and as we know, we have categories for them or
Speaker 3: a zero one two through the EF scale that we
Speaker 3: talked about all the time. And the stronger the wind,
Speaker 3: the more damage you're going to have. The storms can
Speaker 3: be very large. We don't tend to see them. Most
Speaker 3: of Colorado deals with E F zero EF one. They
Speaker 3: don't last all that long. A land spout is in essence,
Speaker 3: a dust devil that starts on the ground because of
Speaker 3: heating or swirling wind, and as a thunderstorm is growing,
Speaker 3: just starting to develop, it acts like a suction or
Speaker 3: a vacuum, and it stucks that rotation up and connects
Speaker 3: it with the cloud and gives it a little more
Speaker 3: spin up and so it grows from a different direction. Now,
Speaker 3: the lamp spout that did the damage in Franktown yesterday,
Speaker 3: most lamp spouts do not do damage. They last, they
Speaker 3: don't last very long, and their speeds are very very low.
Speaker 3: But I mean, you don't want to be in one.
Speaker 3: I mean feeling even stung by bees. The one that
Speaker 3: hit frank Down came up and hit the corner of
Speaker 3: a building. It looks like it took a roof off
Speaker 3: of a commercial property that one only lasted ninety seconds,
Speaker 3: But ninety seconds enough. Here's the problem when it comes
Speaker 3: to land spouts. The radar the start at the ground.
Speaker 3: The radar cannot point directly to the ground radar right,
Speaker 3: so the radar is pointing over the horizon. So the
Speaker 3: farther out you get from the radar, the beam is
Speaker 3: getting higher and higher and higher off the ground because
Speaker 3: of the curvature of the earth. So because the radar
Speaker 3: is not pointed at the ground, it's pointed more in
Speaker 3: the middle aspect of the storms where we can see
Speaker 3: the rotation. You don't get the notification of anything happening
Speaker 3: until it grows tall enough that it might be able
Speaker 3: to be seen by radar. So, in essence, we can
Speaker 3: be blind in those respects when it comes to the technology.
Speaker 3: Once it connects, it can grow tall, and generally the
Speaker 3: base of the thunderstorm is way up high, and sometimes
Speaker 3: you'll be able to see it growing up and it
Speaker 3: does visually look like a tornado, it's just a different formation.
Speaker 1: So but does it ever become a tornado or is
Speaker 1: it all a land spout and it's always a tornado
Speaker 1: based on how they start.
Speaker 3: Now it's because of the way it started. It's not
Speaker 3: going to the storm that's generating. It is not the
Speaker 3: typical formation of a classic rotating funderstorm. It's basically the
Speaker 3: thunderstorm is growing and the air going into the thunderstorm
Speaker 3: is kind of drawing up that land spout, if you will.
Speaker 3: The cloud itself is not generating the rotation in the spent.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it sounds to me as a Floridian. A
Speaker 1: land spout is the same as a water spout on
Speaker 1: the water.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it can be. But sometimes water stoups can
Speaker 3: be tornadoes that form over water, and they define them
Speaker 3: as water stops because they're over water.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've actually been in the Gulf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been in the Gulf of Mexico on a
Speaker 1: small boat when I watched a land spout form and
Speaker 1: it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life and also super terrifying. So I didn't
Speaker 1: enjoy the as we were running away from it as
Speaker 1: fast as we could, but it was really fascinating to
Speaker 1: see it happen in real time. It was really super cool.
Speaker 1: Here's one for you, Dave. Ask Dave if a dust
Speaker 1: devil is related to the Tasmanian Devil.
Speaker 3: Or the vice versa. Yes, the Tasmanian Devil is related
Speaker 3: to the dust level. Yeah, because dust devils. We all
Speaker 3: know the cartoon, right, Yes, swirled the dust devil in
Speaker 3: the cartoon, you know, bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil,
Speaker 3: a swirling pile of dust creating chaos. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's interchangeable. Which came first, the chicken of
Speaker 3: the egg. I can't tell you.
Speaker 2: This is a serious question.
Speaker 3: They need.
Speaker 1: The smoke here on the western slope is awful. Please
Speaker 1: ask Dave if there's any relief coming dust in the
Speaker 1: next week. We've got some big fire fires burning on
Speaker 1: the western slope the border of Utah. Is there any
Speaker 1: rain coming to give any relief from that?
Speaker 3: You know? Unfortunately, the long range outlook for the next
Speaker 3: six to ten days does keep the western slope dry.
Speaker 3: They struggle at this time of the year. We're benefiting
Speaker 3: from a cold front that came in from the east
Speaker 3: last night. They did not make it up and over
Speaker 3: the mountains to the west. So while there will be
Speaker 3: spotty storms over the west, for instance, the San Juans tomorrow,
Speaker 3: the San Juan Mountains in the southwest. We'll get some
Speaker 3: small storms out there. I don't see a huge relief coming.
Speaker 3: I don't see a widespread rain event enough to you know,
Speaker 3: put the fires out. The hope with the smoke might
Speaker 3: be that if we can get a little wind to
Speaker 3: stir it and get it up in the way. They
Speaker 3: do have air quality alerts right now for the west
Speaker 3: and southwest part of the state because of the smoke.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate. But that part of the state We've talked
Speaker 3: about it for months and months and months, is the
Speaker 3: part of the state. The eastern half of the state
Speaker 3: has no drought. The western half of the state is
Speaker 3: still druggling its drought and the trade off for rain
Speaker 3: chances may come with lightning, and that of course can
Speaker 3: spark additional fires. I mean, we've seen the news. You
Speaker 3: know what's happening down in the Grand Canyon area in Arizona.
Speaker 3: You know, unfortunate to see that the lodge was lost
Speaker 3: and stuff. So the west is struggling a little bit.
Speaker 3: I just don't see a big enough storm right now
Speaker 3: to help. But any wind can help disperse the smoke,
Speaker 3: and that would be my hope, is that maybe we
Speaker 3: get the smoke up in a way so that they
Speaker 3: don't have to deal with the poor air quality and
Speaker 3: the smell. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dave Frasier, Joy as always, my friend. We'll talk to
Speaker 1: you next week.
Speaker 3: Yep. Have a great rest of your week.
Speaker 2: Huh you do? That is Dave Frasier from Fox thirty one.