Snow kidding! Weather wacky
Rocky Mountain News
Published May 23, 2007 at midnight
A mostly soggy week with a bit of late-season snow should start to yield to sunny skies as Memorial Day weekend approaches.
It was no picnic, though, Wednesday when light snow fell Wednesday along Interstate 70 on both sides of the Eisenhower Tunnel and along some mountain passes.
Heavy rain and some hail fell in parts of the metro area, in the eastern plains and along the Interstate 25 corridor to the south.
And where it didn’t snow, there was plenty of rain. Pueblo measured .64 inch of precipitation over a 24 hour period by 6:30 p.m Wednesday. Temperatures ranged from a high of 75 in Springfield to a low of 25 in Leadville.
The National Weather Service said the Denver Metro area should begin to dry out today with a forecast of mostly sunny skies and temperatures reaching the high 60s.
The nicer weather is expected to roll into the Memorial Day weekend. Highs are expected in the 70s to near 80 over what should be a mostly sunny three-day weekend with a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms Sunday and Monday.
At the Weather Service office Wednesday in Boulder, meteorologist Robert Koopmeiners looked out the office window that faces an open-space area with an agricultural ditch and liked what he saw.
"It’s about as green as I’ve ever seen it in quite some time," said Koopmeiners, who has worked in Colorado since 1989. "You would think we were in Virginia and not Colorado."
The rain should let up today in the Denver metro area, he said.
"I believe we’re going to be drying out a little," he said.
The southwestern mountains of Colorado were under under a snow advisory Wednesday, with up to 8 inches of accumulation possible. A freeze watch was in effect Wednesday night in the San Luis Valley region and much of southeastern Colorado was under a flash-flood watch.
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