Western Weather 2017-18 and Later

jamesdeluxe said:
Just like 2022, May and June have been for the most part dry as a bone, both precip and air humidity
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Don't worry, I'm heading back east in July so that'll change in just a few weeks :bow:


tiny creek a few hundred yards from the house
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Minor stuff, but certainly a bit unusual for 'high desert' Denver/Boulder metro.
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Occasionally nice sunsets with all the clouds though.
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Lots and LOTS of this included free of charge
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large swaths of metro have had inches of hail at times, but this was about our max so far (crosses fingers).
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I should upload the video of this... this is where gutter gets tubed underneath the back patio. It couldn't keep up with the volume, so water is simply flying out of the tube where it meets the downspout and gushing out across the patio instead.
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Spring fell well below expectations for Utah skiing. Jim Steenburgh reported this as SLC's warmest May on record.

I estimate a measly 5 inches of May snow at the Snowbird SNOTEL near mid-Gad vs. 65 inches in May 2011 and 46 inches in May 2019, the last times Snowbird was open for July 4. Snowbird closed for tram maintenance after Memorial Day, promising to open weekends starting June 17-18. Reports from last weekend indicate no skiing in Mineral Basin or on Regulator. Only a constrained sector of Little Cloud was skiable. So last weekend was the end for Snowbird.

For how long a snowpack lasts into summer, its water content is more important than the snowfall total. Alta's 903 inch snowfall had 70 inches SWE. Mammoth's 715 inch snowfall had 87 inches SWE.

From this and past late seasons I've suspected that once you get into true summer mode, Utah and Colorado mountains are warmer than the Sierra. So I looked up the past month's temperatures at the Snowbird SNOTEL vs. Virginia Lakes 9,400 feet, which is off Hwy 395 an hour north of Mammoth. Daytime highs averaged 2.2F warmer and nighttime lows 6.5F warmer at Snowbird than at Virginia Lakes. During that month Virginia Lakes' snowpack melted from 37 inches SWE down to 14 inches while Snowbird's melted from 47 inches SWE down to 2 inches.
 
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People tend to not recognize turning points or extreme events until it is literally upon them (be it weather, stock market/economy, etc...).

Probably my favorite clip of red rocks:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1671739501540933634

So going from the clip James posted to THAT ~10 minutes later....

Not sure if everyone knows about archive.is web functionality; but an easy way to see paywalled news articles. Go to the archive.is website, input a url, and ~3-5 minutes later can read it (some are already archived if it's a few days old).

Twitter vids/pics in Denver Post from past two days.
 
EMSC said:
People tend to not recognize turning points or extreme events until it is literally upon them (be it weather, stock market/economy, etc...).
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Agreed. Golf courses immediately sound air horns whenever there's lightning nearby so players can find shelter -- the last time that happened to me was at Evergreen GC near Denver/we were playing again 20 minutes later. Hard to believe that a trophy venue like RR didn't immediately tell people to beat it.
 
Forgot to mention -- part of the reason I've commented several times on the Red Rocks storm is that I know what it's like to be at a concert there during inclement weather!

As a CU student, I attended the famous U2 concert 40 years ago (June 5, 1983) that became the Under A Blood Red Sky album and video, which propelled the group into superstardom. It rained hard most of the day (no lightning luckily) and they probably would've cancelled if the band hadn't already spent considerable production money on the shoot. As you can see in the clip, by showtime it had cleared up enough for them to perform. Funny to see Bono's big bad mullet and The Edge pre-skullcap!

 
Perhaps James and EMSC would have had a different view than I did of the Cruel World interruption in Pasadena on May 20.

I'm sure I'm complacent about lightning due to its rarity in coastal California. During summer 2020 Liz and I often floated in the Gulf at sunset watching the natural light shows to the north over Clearwater or to the south over St. Petersburg. Reputedly the Tampa Bay area in summer has one of the highest frequencies in the world for thunderstorms. During summer 2020 they consistently missed us to the north or south. We had more rain during the last week of June 2021 than during the 11 weeks I was there in 2020.

My skepticism at Cruel World was based upon my 65 years of living in the area. I would not be skeptical in a location like Red Rocks.
 
Tony Crocker said:
Perhaps James and EMSC would have had a different view than I did of the Cruel World interruption in Pasadena on May 20.
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Of course lightning can be deadly no matter where. But seems like a delay might have been the better call for that one (likely to dissipate quickly) vs cancellation.

jamesdeluxe said:
We've had rain-forest weather since Friday
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(Crosses fingers that the next 2 weeks are wet for the east so it can dry back out for mid-July).

Interestingly exact opposite here. Dryed out over the weekend and warmed up closer to normal (but still below). Today's forecast is the first with warmer than normal temps (by only a few degrees, but by comparison will feel scorching) in a long time which seems odd considering the heat wave just south of us in Texas.

Another note of how wet it has been here... I just turned on the sprinkler system for the year last night in anticipation of finally getting warm temps this week (well, 3-4 days of warm and dry before it cools back down well below normal).
 
EMSC said:
But seems like a delay might have been the better call for that one (likely to dissipate quickly) vs cancellation.
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This is complicated by the residential areas surrounding the Rose Bowl demanding an 11PM curfew for events there.
 
And there we have it: more than annual average precipitation by June 30. Wettest first 6 months since 1967.

Average annual: 14.3
2023 YTD Jun 30: 14.42

It sure helped that June had > 3x normal at 6.10" of precip (and by far the wettest ever June by >1"); also the 6th wettest monthly total ever recorded in Denver.

Now if we can only get that type of water into the mtns during winter.

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This is actually the 2nd snow in the central mtns so far in Sept. Roughly same altitude as far as I can tell going down to nearly 11,000 feet. Forecast is for it to warm right back up for the next ~week before cooling off again.
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