NO FLOODING IS EXPECTED TODAY. The water vapor picture below pretty well tells the tale. The black/brown areas shows regions of the atmosphere where the air is warming and sinking. By contrast, the white/blue areas are regions where the atmosphere is rising and clouds are forming in a moist environment. As you can see, at 9:00am Colorado was changing from a “white, moist state” to a "black, dry state” in the atmosphere. The arrival of the dry air will limit storm activity to the higher elevation areas of the state. But there is a ”fly-in-the ointment” of sorts. A fresh surge of cool, moist plains air will edge into eastern Colorado and push westward into the Front Range foothills from sunset to sunrise. As it does, low level moisture will increase.

In the dry, sinking air, temperatures will climb to normal to slightly above normal levels today – which means, west of the Divide, sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s at higher elevations to the 80s at lower elevations will prevail. Look for dry southwesterly breezes to increase today into tomorrow causing an increase in the fire danger to critical levels for Thursday. Isolated showers and a few thundershowers are possible over the central Rockies, but rainfall will be very light and attended with gusty winds. Rainfall amounts should be less than 0.15 inches and cause no flooding concerns.

The lingering moisture east of the Divide will develop showers and thundershowers over and along the Front Range foothills and mountains from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. Most of these showers and storms will produce less than 0.25 in./15-30 mins. of rainfall. As the storms move off the foothills onto the northeastern Colorado plains, look for counties north of Palmer Divide and along the I-25 corridor from Denver to Fort Collins to get most of the action. We’ll have to keep our eye on whether these storms will be briefly intensified between sunset and midnight as the cool front arrives from the east. Right now it looks like an uptick in lightning activity but rainfalls will remain light.

We’ll be keeping our eye Thursday and Friday on a surge of moisture moving northward out of Texas in the wake of the plains storm system. This low level moisture will be a major player in our weather as we head into the Memorial Day weekend.