Box thirty one's chief meteorologist, Dave Frasier, Hey, Dave.
How we doing today? Well?
I am I have words for you, mister, because last week you did not give me a heads up that I was going to end up with two feet of snow in my driveway.
But there we were. Yeah, that, yeah, that was that. The southern area. We were thinking maybe a one to two, a one to three, and the wind coming up and over these southern areas was so strong it lifted the air and anytime you lift you can generate more snow. And so the totals came in at around eight inches, especially down on the south side of town. So yeah, much more than was expected.
Okay, so we're about to enter into one of our oh my gosh, bitterly cold. Your face is going to freeze when you go outside time periods. When does that start? Is this a true polar vortex? I keep saying that, but I don't even know if it really is.
It is, okay, yeah, so the polar vortex. You know, those are nice little cliche words that we'd like to toss out every now and then. We call it an arctic outbreak. So you know, you have the cold there kind of like a whirlpool spinning around over the poles, and the jet stream is like a lasso, and as long as the jet stream is spinning at the right momentum, it kind of holds all of that cold there at
the poles. But if the jet stream slows or buckles, then the cold air releases, and that's what we're dealing with, and that's why it's called the polar vortex, the vortex being the circulation and the polar being the region from which the cold there comes. So we're thinking the cold. They will start to see thin Friday afternoon, so you
should notice the temperatures dropping. The snow will lag behind that until about eight or nine o'clock, and then we'll get into a period of light snow temperatures on Saturday and Sunday. Their highs will be probably around seventeen to nineteen both days, with morning lows starting out at about two to four below, and then the coldest morning is going to be Monday morning at about five to seven below, and the highs will be right around ten or eleven degrees.
As far as snow, yeah, Bomby, and yeah, we're not We're not looking at a ton of wind, but I'm watching the wind forecast closely. But with the temperatures we're thinking in the morning being near zero or below, you don't need a lot of wind to get feels like or wind chill temperatures that make it feel like it's ten, fifteen, twenty below zero. I don't know if we'll reach the threshold of concern as an advisory for you know, protecting
your scandal. We'll watch that closely. And as far as the snow, the totals came down a little bit, but I always remind people it's really not about the depth of the snow. In this type of a cold atmosphere. Any snow that falls on the roads in the side of that bear is going to make the road slick. So Friday night, Saturday early, Sunday night, Monday early, are
you two timeframes. I think you're looking at about one to four the first round and about one to two, putting us in a total over the weekend of about two to six.
Okay, So I'm just going to spitball here. After talking to Douglas County School superinto and it sounds like Monday, if there's going to be a freezing cold snow type day, even though we're not getting a lot of snow, that might be your delayed start, or maybe some squens might cancel.
I agree. I think that's the reason. I mean overall, I don't know that the snow is going to have much more of an additional impact on roads. I think the roads are going to be what they are and we'll get accustomed to driving on them. You're never going to be able to get the plows to scrape down the bare pavement. Although we always joke about this, we do have the benefit of the solar shovel so if the sun's out, even if it's only fifteen degrees, it will do a good job of on the main roads
getting that pavement cleared down. I do think the one concern on Monday, and the reason we did alert days, we did pinpoint whether alert days for the snow on the roads on Saturday combined with the cold, snow on the roads on Sunday combined with the cold, and Monday purely for just the cold in the morning. As it relates to the kids, right, I can see delays and or cancelations.
All right, So and that is going to last how long we start too? And I say warm up that I'm just back to the thirties would be nice. After that, I.
Think Tuesday very quickly. The sun will be out on Tuesday. While we may start below zero again, that temperature will come up very quickly with sunrise above zero, and I do think we'll get back to about thirty two to thirty four and then from there make our way back to the seasonal forties for the remainder of next week.
I don't see an additional Arctic outbreak. As a matter of fact, the long range through the twenty eighth keeps us a little bit cooler than normal, but not colder than normal, so it might be a slow progression to get back to the forties. But overall, once we get through this cold there, remember, because of our elevation, the coldest are you know, kind of like syrups filling over the edge of pancakes. We'll actually go into the Midwest, so they will be in the deepest of the cold.
We're just going to be on the fringe, but certainly cold enough to make an impact to you being out and about this weekend.
You know what I think I'm gonna do, Dave. I think I'm just going to go to Puerto Rico next week instead. That's going to be my plan. I actually am going to Puerto Rico next week. I'll be broadcasting from Puerto Rico. It's a long story, but I'll be talking to you from Puerto Rico. I'll have their weather report and we can compare weather reports next Wednesday. How about that the.
Same Yeah, yeah, you're going down there with some your nose that Yeah.
I am one of my favorite clients. It has a thing down there that we're going to be talking about next week, and I'm looking forward to it and now really looking forward to it because now I don't have to deal with this. We can we have just a minute. And I know that you guys as meteorologists talk about this stuff, but let's talk about how to harden your home real quick against this because these you know, we have freezing temperatures all the time and pipes don't burst
and things are okay. But when you're in the negatives, then then you're in a situation where things things are going to start to break.
Yeah, you know, you'll hear some things about making sure your pipes are outside are just connected. Hopefully everybody at this point in January has has went to right the outside of their home as it relates to anything sprinkler,
So I think that's not really a concern. I think you've got to be concerned about older homes that have their you know, there's kitchen sinks or maybe a bathroom that's on an outside wall, and the insulation in the home isn't great, maybe the windows, maybe the windows, you know, don't completely keep the cold there out. And in those situations, you know, the best advice is to turn the faucet on for a trickle during the overnight hours, just to
keep the water flowing. You know, rivers tend not to freeze. They might have an ice on top of them, but if the river is moving, the water will continue to move, so you won't freeze the pipe. And then the other thing you can do is you can open up your cabinet doors underneath those sinks and let some of the warm air from the house go in. You can certainly bump the temperature up in the house too to combat it.
But again, I think those concerns are generally with older homes. Right, newer homes of the last twenty twenty five years, with efficient furnaces and stuff, should be able to you know, withstand this gold. The one thing that we never know is do we bust something underground, like right before where you know you got flooding waters in the street because the one hundred year old pipe running down the neighborhood
in downtown Denver couldn't withstand the cold. And so those are things that you're not going to be able to control them, right.
I got a couple questions from the text line, Mandy, aren't these so called polar vortex is just what we used to call Rossby waves.
With the waves, those are the waves. Those are the circulation the jet streams around around the planet. So at the poles it goes one way. In the mid latitudes it goes the other way, and they buckle and everything it relates to the jet streams. So the answer to that, flat out, without getting too deep, is yes, that's what they're called. But we've given them certain names because I
think it defines more directly what we're expecting. Polar vortex sounds more like what you would expect coming this weekend as opposed to a Rosbie wave.
Well, let me ask one more question. Would you ask Dave if the jet stream in the southern hemisphere goes the same direction as it does up here.
Again, jet streams go so the mid latitudes, that's us, our storms go from west to east. Poler goes the opposite way. And then in the southern hemisphere, same thing. Mid latitudes are going the opposite way, and the polls so they reverse, each one of them reverses. Okay, the southern hemisphere is completely opposite of the northern hemisphere. Okay.
And a lot of people on our tech SGE are pointing out the Monday is Mlkday. The kids will be out of school anyway, so I don't have to worry.
About that, right, all right, that's right, hard thing on that one.
There we go, all right, Dave Fraser, I will be talking to you when you're freezing your took us off next week from sunny Puerto Rico. So I look forward to that, my friend.
I'll be looking for some type of a tropical servants to see if you can't do in your plans a little. There you go, thanks a lot.
I appreciate that, Dave Fraser from Box thirty one. I appreciate you, man,