Fox thirty one's chief meteorologist, Dave Frasier. Dave, it's winter, A winter's here.
Yes, it is. Welcome to twenty twenty five.
Let's kick the Dorian on winter. So what are we looking at right now and how much of our weather is polar vortex or just cold.
Just cold, just called As a matter of fact, you probably saw the reports there the big storm earlier in the week that just left us last weekend, that was our Saturday storm and then rolled literally straight down I seventy all the way to the east coast and just retavoc all the way through the Midwest and into the Ohio River Valley. They've got the you know, the polar vortex and the poldest of it. We were on the
western fringe, but our pattern definitely switched. We knew that a little more than a week ago that we get into a little bit of a colder pattern that's certainly going to trend through about next Tuesday before we start to warm back into the forties. So we'll just kind
of stay in the thirties. And we got two chances for snow one tomorrow that one could accumulate the one to two inches during the day and then we've got a chance of a few flurries or light snowshows on Saturday that one doesn't look to do much, so certainly a more active pattern. But the good news we're ahead for snow for where we are in the month of January and for the here yay, that's awesome.
You know, as they say, we need the moisture, we need the moisture. Speaking of needing the moisture, boy, what's happening in California right now is really scary. How much I mean, is there any relief coming for them that you can see? Over those one hundred mile per hour winds that they're facing. They're just driving these fires.
Later this afternoon and later tonight, the wind should start to relax. So we were actually tracking that last night our sister station KTLA in Los Angeles. We were taking their feed. It's an unfortunate situation. The sant and the winds were howling future cast wind speeds were going to keep the speeds at the seventy plus mile per hour all night last night and should start to relax a little bit today. Now the wind's not going to go calm, but those stronger gush should start to relax through the
day to day. But we all know, unfortunately here in Colorado, what that can mean. The Marshall Fire obviously the most recent one. Once you start to burn with that kind of a wind in neighborhoods with you know, natural brushes and grasses and trees, it becomes you can't defend it, winding roads up, kurvy terrain, EA kills and it's just impossible.
And you feel for the homeowners and the people who had to flee and literally running from their cars, out of their cars and running because the traffic was so bad they felt like they just needed to keep going. It's just a horrible situation. It's literally hell on earth, and I feel for them.
I shudder to think what this is going to do because these are this is going to be so catastrophic financially, This is going to be devastating financially, and it is it is probably going to be almost impossible for these people to rebuild and expect to get homeowners insurance.
Well, that's a that's a conversation we were actually having last night because I think you know, you've seen that in parts of Florida when when hurricanes, you know, hit certain areas over and over again, the insurance companies just pull out. They're like, Nope, we're not insuring in that area again because the loss is just is too much. And I agree with you. If you if your home is burned, first of all, and you don't have insurance, what do you do if you do have insurance? How
quickly can you get the funds? Do you want to rebuild in this area? And you try and sell the property, the land, the charred land, who's come buy it?
Yeah? I mean the views are going to be magnificent again at some point.
But it's not like.
They get a lot of rain to repopulate that area with greenery. This is just it's devastating what's happening right now. I didn't mean to go down that road.
But so are they?
Is there any like a further weather relief that they can expect? I mean, what is their precipitation situation?
You know, I haven't looked beyond that. What we what would love to be able to do is talk about you know, the old the Pineapple Express, or an atmosphere river or something that would point the fire hose towards the west coast and help them out. I don't see anything like that that. The pattern right now is more Pacific northwest and across Colorado and the Rockies and on to the east than it is from the southwest and in their direction. So hopefully they can get some relief,
you know, sometime soon. But yeah, I think the overall pattern, you know, this is that dry part of the year. Unfortunately, when those winds pick up out there, all it takes is a small spark, and it always seems to happen, unfortunately when the winds are roaring.
Dave Fraser, I didn't even look to see if we had weather questions. Hang on, let me open up the e Commons burials tack line five sixty six. N I know this question for you, Dave. When you say the Santa Ana winds last night on your weather broadcast, did you say they come down from the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Yeah, they blow. They blow from the mountains to the west towards the Pacific Ocean. So what happens is high pressure. The wind around high pressure goes clockwise, and so high pressure builds on the east side of the sand of the Sierra Mountain range and the wind flows around that down the face of the Sierras, goes through some of the lower elevations and the desert areas, it compresses, it heat,
it picks up the dry air. Then it continues to roll over the higher terrain in the cliffs and the ledges towards the west coast and down into those communities, and it blasts out through the canyons, and so the canyon's funnel and strengthen the wind. We see that here all the time. We talked on your show many times about downsloping wind and how it's a drying wind. So as you move the air here in Colorado from the mountains in an easterly direction down towards Denver, that downward
motion is like turning on a hair dryer. It compresses, it heats, and it drives the air. And so we end up with that. And we see at times when the wind is funneling through like Chake Cole Creek Canyon. You can get a blast of wind out along Highway ninety three between Boulder and Golden that is just, you know, just unbelievable, flipping trucks over. So they're dealing with it. It's just going the other way. It's going west. Towards
the ocean. As a matter of fact, those fires were driven right up to the Pacific Coast Highway and the next stop was the ocean.
Okay, I got one more question for you, Dave. This one about something I know about and hate. Out of all of our weather things that you can endure on a regular basis, ice storms are the worst, and I experience them in Kentucky. And I have a listener who just moved to Kentucky who said back this question. Mandy asked Dave how a snowstorm can turn to an ice storm when the temperature on the ground doesn't change. First, Kentucky ice storm wasn't really fun and ice storms are horrible.
So that part of the country I'm familiar because I lived in Cincinnati ice belt area from say Saint Louis across you know, across the Midwest Saint Louis over towards you know, say, Cincinnati and parts of Kentucky. And what happens is you have a shallow layer of cold air at the ground. The temperature doesn't need to change. It's just cold enough that as the moisture comes through, it's not freezing overhead, so it's not coming as snow. It's coming as rain. It gets into that cold, shallow layer
close to the ground and it freezes on contact. So you know, it's just one of those situations where everything in the lowest part of the of the atmosphere at ground level is cold enough that any moisture that hits it freezes instantly, and so you don't you're not going to get a lot of temperature. Now if it was, if it was colder, then you would be dealing with all snow as the snowflakes fall to the ground, but
you're not. You're dealing with warmer air aloft hitting colder air at the surface, and it just turns into a sheet of ice and accumulating ice, and it is nasty and.
It hangs on your power lines and then they snap and it is just the most miserable experience to just get through it. It's so awful.
Anyway, Yeah, go ahead, Dad, We'll take six inches of snow over a tenth of an inch of ice.
Amen to that, my friend, Amen to that. Dave Fraser, Good to talk to you as always. We will chat again next week. Happy twenty twenty five, my friend.
Yeah, let's hope it's a good one. It will be well willing to be.
We'll do the assumed clothes, all right, Dave uh, there you go.