Our friend and chief meteorologist from Fox thirty one, Dave Frasier.
Hello, Dave, Hey, good afternoon. How are you.
I am.
I'm cranky about the state of affairs in America, but I'm happy to talk to you about the weather.
How about that?
Yeah, I was listening, so I'm gonna tread lightly.
I don't want to be the one to cause you to curse on the radio.
No, you could never do that unless you tell me that we're about to have four feet of snow tomorrow, in which case I can make no promises that I would not curse you.
No, that's not coming anytime soon that I can see.
No, And can we talk.
For a second. Let's not talk about the weather here so much. Can we talk about what's happening in California right now? Because are we going to get the smoke? Everything is on fire in southern California right now? Like everything is on fire? Are we going to get that is not going to impact our air quality? Because I have so far been enjoying the summer without it. But man, it looks like it's going to be bad.
Yeah, it's possible.
I think to the north and east of.
The Front Range with the wind flow aloft and some smoke.
Could drift in.
So far, what we've been seeing is it's up high, so it's not filtering down row and we've got a chance with thunderstorms in the forecast that helps to stir the air a little bit. So for right now, that's not a huge concern. Plus, tomorrow our windflow be from a different direction, be more southerly, and so it won't be tapping into what's going on out west. And so
I think for the next few days we're okay. But that is certainly something we're keeping an eye on, especially given how large those fires are.
All right, so what are we looking at here just in weatherwise, Yes.
Got a thunderstorms this afternoon. We've had a chance each day this week, and not much is materialized down here. We're in that downsloping pattern that we talk about where the storms kind of make their way from the mountains down over the face of the foothills and that downward
motion drives them out. So while we've had a few sprinkles up and down the front range, I think today there's just a slightly better setup that we'll get some wedding rains in a few areas, But don't hold your breath for rain today chance twenty to thirty percent chance, and then after.
That we go back to a dry conditions.
I don't really have much going on for rain chances in the forecast. The eastern plains east of Denver on Sunday might see a stray storm, but otherwise I've got Denver's forecast right. The good news is once we get past tomorrow's ninety degree day, I don't see any more nineties. And the deeper we get into September, it's hard to reach ninety because of the shorter days of the low sun angle.
Okay, good, I'm okay with that.
I'm enough with the ninety I'm ready for our like two and a half weeks of fall we get before we.
Get the first biged no storm. I just I don't know. I like this weather. I like it in the eighties.
That we're coming into the time of year that I really really enjoy the most in Colorado. And I know that you know some people askew this time of year and they're like, oh, it's mud season. It's unpredictable that this is my favorite time of the year weatherwise.
Here. It just seems like.
We've got some crazy blips here or there, but for the most part, it's pretty stable.
Yeah, it is, and that's the great that's the word to describe it, the stable part of it. I mean, you've got your beautiful upper seventies eighties during the day, she get to enjoy the warmth. The days are shorter, so that warmth or in some people's opinion, that he doesn't stick around long. And then you've got your crisp overnight loads in the upper forties and sidties. I just was out running a few errands and that was something that somebody had pulled me aside and said, I love
this time of the year because of those low overnight loads. Yeah, the windows open and it's cool, and so that's the benefit of September and October in my opinion, two of the best months of the year. However, they are snow months, so you can see wild swings. We've seen that, we know that happens. We've had blizzards, we've had shockingly cold outbreaks that kind of killed vegetation. So they're not per
seine when it comes to the weather. But overall, that stable kind of what you expect is fantastic.
Yeah, Dave, I got a question that we've talked about in the past, but I think it's a very common question, so let's answer it again. And it says, what does it actually mean when they say a certain percentage of rain, like a fort chance of rain?
Does that mean how much chance.
You have over all or for a particular area in your city?
So how do you come up with that number?
It's a calculation that's based on a geographical area, and I we.
We struggle with this all the time.
You know, either way you look at it, it is a chance, right. The percentage should give you some idea of whether that chance is a low risk that you'll run into rain or a widespread chance that you know, we're going to see it.
Just about everywhere.
But it's not calculated to whether or not it's going to rain. It's just a matter of in a geographical area. You take that geographical area, divide it out, you look at the risk factors as it comes to rain, and there's a mathematical formula that calculates out that it's a twenty percent risk or it's a thirty percent risk because in that geographical square, let's just call it, there's.
Probably going to be rained.
But the chance is so remote and it's so scattered and convective that you know.
The risk is low for most people.
But as I jokingly said before, if I tell you there's a thirty percent chance of brain and you're the one coming out of the grocery store caring groceries and it rained on you, your chance just went to one hundred.
Okay, let me ask this question. I think this is a good question.
How many hours in a day constitutes a sunny day? Because even on a sunny day, you can have a straight cloud here and there, it's not partly cloudy. So how many hours do you have to have or how clear does it have to be?
It's going to be based on I think of the adjective as the sky.
So if you say it's.
Going to be partly sunny, clouds are going to win out. If you say it's going to be partly cloudy, the sun's going to be a little more so it's only part of the.
Sky that will be covered out.
You know.
The Chamber of Commerce joke here is that I shouldn't call it a joke because they market on it, is that we get three hundred days of sunshine. It's actually closer to about two sixty to two seventy. So most days it's about how much of the cloud cover is going to block the sky, and then you weigh that out versus, you know, the duration to figure out is it a partly cloudy, is it a partly sunny, is it mostly cloudy? Is it mostly sunny? And so there are there's no hard line.
To the hours, but if you.
Look at what we look at and you look at the computer models and stuff, it's pretty easy to say, like today is going to be a partly cloudy day. So we kind of break it up a little better language morning sunshine, increasing clouds, turning cloud in the afternoon with showers and thunderstorms. We're trying to be a little more specific than just the adjective describing the sky.
So here's the question, do you know the record for the most days in a row of not getting below fifty degrees?
So as the low, I guess yeah.
Or blow off the top of my head.
Now I would have to go in and use our analyzer for historic data to see what that is. So not going below fifty degrees so that would include overnight lows.
I have to go and pull that and see what that is.
Well, now I want to know my head. No, yes, well I'll pull it and now i'll text it to a rod somebody just cour of days.
Not going below fistrees.
Okay, I'll google, I'll look into that.
I'll pull up the historical see if I can find that.
Okay, And this person just said Indian summer, and I'm I'm gonna admit something. I have a hazy idea of what Indian summer is, but I'm not sure what exactly it is because growing up in Florida, you don't really have seasons per se, so you don't worry about Indian summer because it's just summer and then like four weeks of cold and then summer again. Right, So what exactly is Indian summer and are we having one?
Not yet?
Now. Traditionally, it's a warm period that follows our first freeze. Oh okay, yeah, yeah, So you get your first freezing temperatures of the year, and now the freeze, the first freeze is behind us, and then all of.
A sudden you enter back into a warm period.
And that's generally the definition that is used across the country. So it's that that dip into oh it's winter. We're freezing now, and then all of a sudden, that's fake.
It's warm again.
Yeah, that's the we have fake winter and then back to end of summer kind of thing. Okay, good now, I just learned something very much. Just came back from Kansas. It was cooler there for the last four days than here in Kansas.
What's that about?
So they were just the weather pattern has been driving storms to the east of us, and so they've had a little more benefit of a northerly flow than we have. We've been in more of a southwesterly flow. We've been tapping still into desert, dry hot air, and that's what's been pushing us. I mean, we're eleven days into the month, and five of the days so far in September then at ninety degrees or higher. None of those temperatures on those hot days reached record levels. But the average right
now for Denver's eighty two. So you can think, you know, we're running five days above I think, right, five days at ninety or higher, four days at eighty or higher, and one day most people won't remember it, that refreshing day we had almost two weeks ago on Thursday, we were in the seventies.
I still remember it fondly, Dave.
I remember it fondly that Thursday, a couple of weeks ago, when it was just delightful. I'm looking forward to more of those days. Dave Fraser, thank you again for your time. I look forward to your text about how many days in a row without going below fifty degrees we've had.
I'll get it to you shortly, all right.
Thanks Dave. See, this is why we do this.