All the ingredients are in place for a wet weekend!
Friday – 17 Jun 2022 – 8:30am
Archuleta County currently has Stage 1 Fire Restrictions
The San Juan National Forest has implemented STAGE 2 FIRE RESTRICTIONS.
Climate Info:
The high at Stevens Airfield yesterday was 89 degrees (a new record high). The low this morning was 52. Humidity yesterday afternoon bottomed out at 7%. Winds at the airfield peaked at 22mph. There was no precipitation recorded in our area.
Forecast discussion…
The stage is set!
The strong trough is in place along the west coast and we are sandwiched between the trough and the “Hell High” over the plains. This is allowing subtropical moisture to start flowing into our area from the south, increasing dew points on the surface and moisture in the mid-levels. Since we have been so dry, the process of moistening our atmosphere at the surface will take some time, so our first storms this afternoon will potentially be dry ones, increasing our fire danger until rain starts falling from the sky. The great news is that we will see storms and showers forming to our south during the day over the next three days and moving through even in the evenings, so rain will not be just an afternoon event.
As I have mentioned all week, in the short term, this is setting up to be a “Monsoon Preview”, because the trough will move east by early next week, putting us back in a drier zonal flow. Fortunately, the latest model runs continue to show promise for our traditional monsoon to set up by next weekend, with rain coming back into our forecast. Most models are now predicting over 2 inches of rain from Friday through Monday with the best odds on Saturday and Sunday. I think Hurricane Blas, off the coast of Mexico will actually increase the moisture content and that may explain why the models are getting wetter.
As always, this will be convective activity so there will be daily rainfall winners and losers, but hopefully all of us will end up with some beneficial rain by early next week.
Pagosa Springs historical data for June 17th
| Average High | Record High / Year | Average Low | Record Low / Year |
| 79 | 87 / 1986 | 36 | 24 / 1957 |
Call 877-841-0247 for our “dial up and text” forecast.
Check out my Pagosa Peak Cam (myearthcam.com) for watching hikers, bikers and of course, the weather.
-Mark Langford
