Following thunderstorms last evening, we awoke to bright sunshine in Metro Denver this morning. Radio broadcasters, responding to a forecast of rain and snow showers and presumably looking out their small studio windows, scoffed at the predictions of local meteorologists.
Had their window offered a broader view, however, they might have been less dubious. While sunshine bathed the city, the peaks of the Continental Divide had disappeared within a dense band of clouds that extended eastward across the northern horizon. By noon, the front was closing in on Denver but the warm sunshine had sent many locals to parks and outdoor cafes for their lunch. But within another hour, the cold front swept through the Metro area, unleashing cold northerly winds and scattered snow showers.
As I write this post, the storm is centered over southern Nebraska, too far north for a classic upslope snowstorm in Denver; nevertheless, periods of snow are expected to persist through the evening hours. As the storm moves farther east, igniting severe thunderstorms across the Great Plains and Midwest, our winds will shift from the northwest, obliterating the upslope flow and clearing the skies by morning. Weather is all about wind direction in this part of the country.
