Speaker 1: We've got Box thirty one's Dave Frasier on the phone lines.
Speaker 2: Hello Dave, Hey, good afternoon.
Speaker 3: Hope you enjoying it.
Speaker 1: You know what good afternoon it is. I don't know
Speaker 1: where you mail ordered this weather from, but it is
Speaker 1: a okay with me. How much longer do we get
Speaker 1: to enjoy it?
Speaker 3: Two more days?
Speaker 2: Two more days?
Speaker 3: See day Friday.
Speaker 1: I just want to remind people, if you're out and
Speaker 1: about today, take a good glance at these snow capped mountains.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying the mountains are ugly during the summer,
Speaker 1: but aren't they so much prettier when they've got snow
Speaker 1: sitting on the top of them like they do today.
Speaker 1: I made a note of that this morning when I
Speaker 1: was driving in and I was like, dang, they're pretty.
Speaker 1: I want to remind people to take a minute and
Speaker 1: just appreciate the beauty of the front range if you
Speaker 1: have the opportunity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's definitely a chamber of commerce picture. There's
Speaker 3: no question about that. Blue sky's overhead, white capped mountains.
Speaker 3: You know, it'd be great if we were a little
Speaker 3: deeper in the spring and everything down here and already
Speaker 3: greened up and blossomed out. But just looking at those
Speaker 3: mountains too, you'll notice it's deep snow. You can tell
Speaker 3: with your deep snow. And so for the Front Range,
Speaker 3: while other parts of the state are struggling for their
Speaker 3: water supply, we're still looking pretty good. Even though it
Speaker 3: has been a dry March. There's no question about that.
Speaker 3: And I was just sitting here crunching all the numbers
Speaker 3: for March. As we get close to the end of
Speaker 3: the month, we're definitely going to get into the record books.
Speaker 3: The question is where, So what are.
Speaker 1: We looking at in the parts of the state that
Speaker 1: are not snow packed properly? What are what kind of
Speaker 1: levels are we seeing and what does that mean?
Speaker 3: So it just has to go with the water supply.
Speaker 3: You know, we have eight river basins where the mountains
Speaker 3: feed into those basins, and so the southern and southwestern
Speaker 3: part of the state are struggling at less than sixty
Speaker 3: percent of normal. You have close to ninety ninety plus
Speaker 3: to the northwest corner, and then the Front Range is
Speaker 3: doing pretty good still in the ninety percent stile. Remember
Speaker 3: we load all the way through early April, so we
Speaker 3: can still add to that and boost those numbers. But
Speaker 3: to be that close to one hundred percent of normal
Speaker 3: is pretty good. And all of that obviously melts off,
Speaker 3: turns into recreations for the rivers, the streams, the creeks, fishing, wrapping,
Speaker 3: and so but more importantly, it fills the reservoirs and
Speaker 3: gives us the water supply should we stay on a
Speaker 3: dry note. And quite frankly, you know the outlook for March.
Speaker 3: I've told you this time and time again. Don't put
Speaker 3: a lot of effort or emphasis on those long range
Speaker 3: models thirty sixty ninety. It can give you a pattern
Speaker 3: kind of a look, but it doesn't tell you anything
Speaker 3: about the day to day. And so you think about
Speaker 3: a couple of months. February, for instance, we had one
Speaker 3: big snowstorm and that was enough to get us through
Speaker 3: the month. March is not delivered. We've had less than
Speaker 3: an inch of snow. We're struggling with only a quarter
Speaker 3: of an inch of moisture. However, one last push this weekend,
Speaker 3: we have a chance Saturday and Sunday to pick up
Speaker 3: some needed moisture. Right now, it looks to be all
Speaker 3: in the form of rain, and it could be up
Speaker 3: to a half an inch and if that's the case,
Speaker 3: that would get us off the driest list for March,
Speaker 3: which would be fantastic. And the timing is perfect, get
Speaker 3: some moisture as things are starting to the you know,
Speaker 3: leaves are thinking about budding out and the grasses trying
Speaker 3: to get you know, become on doormant and green up
Speaker 3: a little bit. So the timing of this weekend's rain
Speaker 3: would be perfect. The question and we have is where's
Speaker 3: that snow line? Because it is still March and it
Speaker 3: can drop down, and so we're watching that closely to
Speaker 3: see if there could be a mix maybe on the
Speaker 3: south and west side of town above six thousand, or
Speaker 3: could it accumulate to a slushy couple of inches. Those
Speaker 3: are the questions we have to answer in the next
Speaker 3: few days. All right.
Speaker 1: I got a question from a text on the Common
Speaker 1: Spirit Heal text line at five sixty six nine Ohero
Speaker 1: question for Dave F. The National Weather Service is reducing
Speaker 1: balloon launches at some sites, including in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.
Speaker 1: How will this impact models as well as human forecasting?
Speaker 1: And I want to add to that question and ask
Speaker 1: what are we using the weather balloons for? It almost
Speaker 1: seems archaic in the time of all these super duper
Speaker 1: Doppler radar seven thousands that we have all over the place.
Speaker 3: Well, the weather balloons have instrumentation attached to them as
Speaker 3: they leave the ground and go through the atmosphere, and
Speaker 3: those instruments are taking slices of the atmosphere temperatures, wind
Speaker 3: de point, humidity levels, and all of those factor into
Speaker 3: what the atmosphere looks like. Vertically, that information is plugged
Speaker 3: into computer models to help analyze the atmosphere, and then
Speaker 3: the computer models extrapolate that out to give us what
Speaker 3: we call our guidance. Different computer models have different algorithms
Speaker 3: set into them, and that's why you have variations in forecasts.
Speaker 3: Some computer models will you know, go crazy with certain things,
Speaker 3: others will be a little more restricted, and it's our
Speaker 3: job as meteorologists to look into that. I do you know,
Speaker 3: there is a concern that if we lose too much
Speaker 3: of that valued upper atmosphere data, then it could skew
Speaker 3: the models, giving us, you know, a real headache in
Speaker 3: trying to interpret what might be happening in the future,
Speaker 3: predicting you know, the forecast, so to speak. It's not
Speaker 3: a crisis right now, what we're watching closely in we're
Speaker 3: in partnership, and I talk with our friends up in
Speaker 3: Boulder at the National Weather Service is where they may
Speaker 3: make cuts, what jobs may be eliminated, and does that
Speaker 3: have anything to do with public safety. That's my concern,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want I want the forecast to
Speaker 3: be as accurate as possible, and that's why I spend
Speaker 3: hours digging through model data and details and looking at
Speaker 3: as much as I can. You could, literally, Mandy, spend
Speaker 3: eight hours looking at the variations and models and the details,
Speaker 3: finite details, and never get a forecast complete. At some
Speaker 3: point you have to make a decision right and move on.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, I spend as much time as
Speaker 3: I can, and then I'll tweak it, don't I don't
Speaker 3: just throw it down on paper and walk away. I'll
Speaker 3: throw it down on paper and go back and look
Speaker 3: at it and updated with new model data. But again,
Speaker 3: I'm not terribly concerned at this juncture about those weather
Speaker 3: balloons and the data. But I am concerned if the
Speaker 3: National Weather Service loses frontline people who may be doing
Speaker 3: nothing more than watching radar closely to determine if the
Speaker 3: storm is going to hail. If it's got lightning, could
Speaker 3: have produced a tornado and not getting those warnings out.
Speaker 3: By the way, we can see that same data with
Speaker 3: our set, but they are the governing body responsible for
Speaker 3: alerting the public to those dangers.
Speaker 2: Let me ask one.
Speaker 1: More question, and we only have a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: left here, but it's a question I have and this
Speaker 1: one said Mandy. I saw the closed cloud formation the
Speaker 1: other day. It was like a stack of pancakes. I
Speaker 1: think it's called lenticular Can you ask Dave what causes that?
Speaker 1: And is that something that happens mostly in Colorado And
Speaker 1: I'm going to be from the east coast. I had
Speaker 1: never seen those until I was I got here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it is. It is just that lenticula. Think
Speaker 3: about the curve of a lens, like a like a
Speaker 3: you know, your glasses or a contact lens. And what
Speaker 3: happens is the wind flow comes out of the west
Speaker 3: over the mountains, and as it curls up and over
Speaker 3: the peaks, if there's just the right amount of moisture
Speaker 3: as it's curving, it condenses that moisture into a cloud
Speaker 3: because it's lifting it over the peak, and so you
Speaker 3: get these flying saucer or lenticular looking clouds, and if
Speaker 3: the wind is strong enough, you can get them in.
Speaker 3: Like your listener asked, it can look like pancakes. So
Speaker 3: you could have one of the lower elevation one a
Speaker 3: little higher. They could be dotted down the entire Front
Speaker 3: Range mountains, and they are one of the coolest cloud
Speaker 3: formations when they happen. And yes, you're right, those of
Speaker 3: us from the east who grew up there, you got
Speaker 3: to come west to be able to see that beauty?
Speaker 1: Is that because like the Smoky mountains aren't high enough
Speaker 1: or they're not rocky like our mountains are. They're tree
Speaker 1: covered for the most part, or any amount of humidity.
Speaker 2: Why does it only happen here?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: So you need a mountain, I'm guessing, and you need
Speaker 1: that upslope wind.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's the height of our mountains.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know, okay, you know.
Speaker 3: This is This is fine, this is I couldn't believe
Speaker 3: the statistic one I heard years and years and years ago.
Speaker 3: So our mountains, as we know, we have peaks that
Speaker 3: reached thirteen fourteen thousand feet in the atmosphere are fourteen ers. Right,
Speaker 3: do you know that the tallest mountain from base to
Speaker 3: the top. You know where it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Isn't it one of the Hawaiian islands.
Speaker 3: No, it's actually I'm pretty sure it's Mount Washington in
Speaker 3: New Hampshire. What so, Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'll I'll
Speaker 3: double check, but I'm almost positive it's Mount Washington in
Speaker 3: New Hampshire. And so it's the face of the mountain
Speaker 3: is more than six thousand feet tall. Where our mountains
Speaker 3: slope up, you go up the footage right right, ten thousand,
Speaker 3: you go up to eleven thousand. You know, you start
Speaker 3: skiing and you go up, so you think about it.
Speaker 3: You're you know, the base of the mountains are not
Speaker 3: all the way down to the ground. They're they're already
Speaker 3: elevated as you climb up to those fourteen ers.
Speaker 2: Oh, I got it.
Speaker 3: So it's its height versus tall.
Speaker 2: Got it? I understand?
Speaker 3: Dave.
Speaker 2: One last text, Yeah it does.
Speaker 1: Before I let you go, Dave makes a sound that
Speaker 1: sound like forecasting the weather is a science rather than
Speaker 1: looking outside to.
Speaker 2: See if the rock is wet or dry.
Speaker 1: If only it was just the rock is wet or dry,
Speaker 1: that would be it. Dave Fraser, we appreciate you. We'll
Speaker 1: talk to again next week, my friend.
Speaker 3: All right, keep an eye on your rock and enjoy
Speaker 3: the next couple of days, all right, Thanks Dave, That
Speaker 3: is Dave Fraser.