Speaker 1: We check in with the best day meteorologists out there.
Speaker 1: He's Dave Frasier.
Speaker 2: Hi, Dave, Hey, good afternoon on a beautiful October.
Speaker 1: First, I was going to say, I have absolutely no
Speaker 1: complaints about today, So well done. Whatever ingredients you had
Speaker 1: to put in your witches brew there to draw up
Speaker 1: this weather, you keep up the good work. But how
Speaker 1: much longer are we going to be getting? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think today, are we going to hit eighty today?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's our forecast. I is eighty. We're warming about
Speaker 2: two to three degrees above where we were yesterday at
Speaker 2: this time, so that should put us on track for eighty.
Speaker 2: Yesterday we hit seventy seven for the last day of September,
Speaker 2: and so a couple of degrees of warming should get
Speaker 2: us right there. And the average, just so everybody knows,
Speaker 2: is about seventy two, So that is above average, but
Speaker 2: it's not record setting. The records are ninety today and
Speaker 2: then upper eighties for the next few days.
Speaker 1: So it's going to say it's going to be upper
Speaker 1: eighties the next few days. When are we going to
Speaker 1: start to see that lovely fall weather return?
Speaker 2: Come Saturday, come the weekend, we'll start to get a
Speaker 2: little bit of a cool down, a storm system coming
Speaker 2: in from the Pacific northwest, the bulk of which looks
Speaker 2: to go north of Colorado, but a week trailing cold
Speaker 2: front on the southern fringe of it should come across
Speaker 2: the north Central Mountains and clip northeast Colorado. So I
Speaker 2: have shower chances in Saturday late afternoon, early evening, and
Speaker 2: again later in the day on Sunday. It's not a
Speaker 2: high chance, twenty thirty percent chance. And I really think
Speaker 2: it's Denver North that sees it because of the position
Speaker 2: of the storm to the north of us. But a
Speaker 2: week cold front should get us into the mid seventies
Speaker 2: on Saturday, and then following that will be in the
Speaker 2: mid sixties on Sunday, and then the rest of next
Speaker 2: week does look to stay in the sixties, about sixty
Speaker 2: five sixfoos every day and a little unsettled. And by
Speaker 2: that what I mean is there's just going to be
Speaker 2: these storms kind of passing by to the north, and
Speaker 2: I think just close enough by that we're going to
Speaker 2: keep up a ten percent cya chance for a few
Speaker 2: showers in the forecast each afternoon as some of that
Speaker 2: moisture works its way over the mountains and could creep
Speaker 2: down into Denver. Nothing widespread, nothing big, but just a
Speaker 2: little unsettled and certainly a little more like fall for
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 1: I've been kind of surprised as I go to let
Speaker 1: my dog out first thing in the morning, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it rained last night. Like we've been
Speaker 1: getting rain overnight, which I don't recall in my vast
Speaker 1: thirteen years as being a regular thing. So I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: this summer's been different than any other summer I remember here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think it's been the right mix. And
Speaker 2: while it may not be a traditional summer, I just
Speaker 2: think that overall it's been pretty good. You know, we
Speaker 2: expect certain types of weather when it comes to stormy skies,
Speaker 2: the hail season and the flooding rains and the monsoons.
Speaker 2: We expect that from time to time, and I just
Speaker 2: think that it's just been enough sampling of everything that
Speaker 2: the mix has just been fantastic. For instance, September, I
Speaker 2: crunched the numbers last night, and some people may remember,
Speaker 2: you know, well, it was warm early in the month.
Speaker 2: The longest temperature we had in September was ninety degrees.
Speaker 2: I think was back on the tenth right, and the
Speaker 2: average came out actually one tenth of a degree below. Yeah, wow, September.
Speaker 2: So an average September is like sixty four point eight,
Speaker 2: and we ended up at sixty four point seven. So
Speaker 2: temperature wise, there was a balance as you look at
Speaker 2: the monthly calendar between some above normal temperatures and a
Speaker 2: series of below normal temperatures that everything weighed out to
Speaker 2: be just about average for this time, and we did
Speaker 2: well for moisture because of those overnight showers. We ended
Speaker 2: up about the four tenths of an inch ahead. And
Speaker 2: of course August was great for us for moisture. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think the balance has been fantastic.
Speaker 1: I got a couple questions from our common Spirit health
Speaker 1: techt line, ask Weatherman Fraser that seems to be very
Speaker 1: I mean, chief Meteorologist Fraser Texture. Ask Weatherman Fraser, why
Speaker 1: does the temperature drop when the sun rises?
Speaker 2: So what happens is your lowest temperature in the morning
Speaker 2: generally occurs just the little f or sunrise. So what
Speaker 2: happens is the sun comes up and for a brief
Speaker 2: period that sunrise heats the atmosphere and kind of turns.
Speaker 2: It turns it a little bit, and colder air always
Speaker 2: sinks to the bottom. So think of a think of
Speaker 2: a murky kind of sandy glass of water and you
Speaker 2: spin it and it's all mixed together. When that goes calm,
Speaker 2: the coldest air kind of drops to the bottom, or
Speaker 2: the sand settles on the bottom of the sediment. Same
Speaker 2: thing happens in the atmosphere. The coldest air is going
Speaker 2: to calm as things kind of are settled. There's just
Speaker 2: enough turnover in the morning briefly as the sun comes
Speaker 2: up before the warming effect kicks in that that colder
Speaker 2: air sinks to the ground.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, But a follow up question that
Speaker 1: would be what causes that turbulence? What causes that churn?
Speaker 1: Is it the sun rising? Is it the what makes
Speaker 1: that happen in the first place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you think about the overnights as being calm
Speaker 2: and stable, yeah, and you don't have the heat eating
Speaker 2: of the sun, you don't have that kind of rising
Speaker 2: motion and kind of that mixing of the atmosphere and
Speaker 2: so forth and so on, then sometimes you know, you
Speaker 2: can get that little bit of a turnover. Same thing
Speaker 2: happens like when we're dealing with wind. So sometimes at
Speaker 2: night we have this, We have this roaring wind coming
Speaker 2: off the foothills and it's kind of cold overnight, and
Speaker 2: the cooler, stable air is forcing the wind down the
Speaker 2: foothills and blowing it out. And then the sun rises
Speaker 2: and the air rises, and it kind of lifts that
Speaker 2: stronger wind away from us on the ground and lifts
Speaker 2: it overhead. So again the atmosphere is very buoyant. That buoyancy,
Speaker 2: just much like an ocean can make a difference. I
Speaker 2: mean in the ocean, you know, the same thing is happening.
Speaker 2: The colder air is sinking down. By the way, did
Speaker 2: you know what the cold is air? I think I've
Speaker 2: told you this before. The coldest temperature for sinking air. No,
Speaker 2: do you have a thirty nine degrees? What? Yeah? Think
Speaker 2: about that? Right? Doesn't make sense? But what happens. What
Speaker 2: happens is you pass thirty nine and you approach thirty two.
Speaker 2: I guess it's yeah, freezes and it flows to the top.
Speaker 2: This coldest oceanaire is closer to thirty nine degrees, causing
Speaker 2: it to sink as opposed to getting closer to freezing,
Speaker 2: when it will turn into cubes and rises.
Speaker 1: Well, isn't that nerdy and interesting? One more question before
Speaker 1: we let you go, and that is just how much
Speaker 1: more difficult is forecasting weather here than other cities? Or
Speaker 1: is that just a myths?
Speaker 2: No, it's not a myth. I remember more than twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago when I was leaving Cincinnati to come
Speaker 2: out here. I worked in the Midwest. There are certain
Speaker 2: things in the Midwest where you can literally do persistent forecasting,
Speaker 2: where you can look out the window and say, doing
Speaker 2: this one hundred miles away, it's going to do this
Speaker 2: in about three hours. It's not that simplistic. Every part
Speaker 2: of the country has its nuances when it comes to
Speaker 2: forecasting challenges. Right about the Great Lakes and lake effects.
Speaker 2: Now you think about, you know, sea breezes in the
Speaker 2: southeast and Florida and the challenges that come with those
Speaker 2: wind lines and shifts and everything like that. But I
Speaker 2: remember when I was leaving to come here, one of
Speaker 2: my good friends in Cincinnati said, you have any idea
Speaker 2: what you get yourself into moving prospect he put to Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 2: He says, good luck to you. And I literally had
Speaker 2: to go and dig out some college books and kind
Speaker 2: of refresh Mountain meteorology, and it has to do with
Speaker 2: everything we talk about here on Weather Wednesdays. It has
Speaker 2: to do with our variant topography and wind is king.
Speaker 2: I say that to when we're interviewing candidates. I said,
Speaker 2: you're going to study wind like you've never studied win before.
Speaker 2: When speeds, when direction lifting, wind falling, wind upslope, downslope,
Speaker 2: direction of the wind, jet streams, so forth. So the
Speaker 2: wind is what drives it, and the monoliths of the
Speaker 2: mountains get in the way of that. And you have
Speaker 2: to understand as that wind flows up, over, down, through
Speaker 2: and around, it changes our weather. And so that's why
Speaker 2: we have when you see snowfall forecast. The variation is
Speaker 2: all driven on what we call topographical features, the mountains,
Speaker 2: the hills, the Palmer Divide, everything plays into that.
Speaker 1: Well, Dave Frasier informative as always that I have one
Speaker 1: more question. Maybe we'll get to it in the next
Speaker 1: Well maybe you can answer a yes or no. Can
Speaker 1: you ask why some of our records date back to
Speaker 1: before we had SUVs. Well, I'm not quite sure why they.
Speaker 1: I mean, how far do our records go back? Reliable
Speaker 1: records here in the metro Do you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've had our records go back to the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds, oh wow, right, started being kept and
Speaker 2: again we've talked about this before. Records have been kept
Speaker 2: at four different sites in Denver to downtown, one at
Speaker 2: Stapleton finally moved out in the nineties to Denver International.
Speaker 2: So that's our history of records in Denver eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds to now.
Speaker 1: All right, that is Fox thirty one chief meteorologists. You
Speaker 1: can watch him and the rest of their amazing team
Speaker 1: over at Fox thirty one on Fox thirty one and
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you next week, my friend.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the next couple of days and the fall feeling
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 1: Amen to that.