Climatologist Klaus Wolter released his monthly update yesterday on El Nino conditions. He says the fledgling El Niño of 2009 may have been a factor in our cool and wet early summer, but has ‘dropped the ball’ in August so far. All things being equal, much of the southwestern U.S. has a decent chance of a wet fall due to El Niño.

Also of note:

The La Niña of 2007-09 ended about four months ago. Weak-to-moderate El Niño conditions became established in June, but have not continued to strengthen since then. It is unclear whether they will last through next winter, or whether they will strengthen substantially at all.

After our anticipated wet week in late July, the summer monsoon has been underperforming for much of August in most of the southwestern U.S. (and Mexico). Remaining surplus soil moisture and continued overall cool weather have cushioned the blow in some dry regions of Colorado and Utah.

Wolter’s experimental forecast guidance for the fall season (October-December) is pessimistic (dry) for New Mexico and Arizona, but more neutral for Colorado, including increased odds for the northeastern corner of the state where forecast skill has been highest. Based on El Niño conditions alone, we have a better-than-average chance for increased fall precipitation in much of the southwestern U.S.

You can read more by clicking here.

It was a record breaking day today! The Pueblo Airport hit 101 degrees which broke the record of 98 degrees set in 1949. A high of 91 degrees matched the record at the Colorado Springs Airport today also set in 1949.

With more moisture and clouds for Monday, temps will cool a bit, but a cold front Monday night will drop temps even more for Tuesday!

We get a break!  Well I guess I should say Chief Meteorlogist Matt Meister and Meteorologist Josh Poland get a break!  Severe weather over the past two days has kept STORMTRACKER 13 very busy.  I kept an eye on it from home on my two days off, but the other guys put in some serious time in the weather office!  Here are the storm reports from the National Weather Service from yesterday’s storms.  All of the green dots are hail at or larger than an inch in diameter, the blue dot is a damaging wind gust near 58mph and the red triangles are tornadoes.

A tornado touched down 11 miles SE of Walsenburg yesterday afternoon at 2:18pm.  And the Park County Sheriff’s office says there was a funnel cloud near 11-Mile State Park and a tornado touched down near Lake George.  The tornado uprooted trees and tipped over a trailer home. Fortunately no one was in it at the time.  You can check out the viewer pics slide show here krdo.com.  Good news is we do get a break!  Pretty calm weather is expected through the weekend.

We often times show you some of the beautiful pictures we find across our Neighborhood Weather Network. That’s not the case today as many of us had a good deal of cloud cover throughout the morning. We had some fog and mist develop just in time for the morning commute in places like Briargate and Monument with low clouds in other parts of the Springs.

Early this morning, Tropical Depression Two strengthened into Ana–our first named tropical storm of the 2009 Atlantic Hurricane season. As of 7:30 a.m., Tropical Storm Ana had maximum-sustained winds of 40 mph and was headed west at 16mph. It is expected to strengthen further over the weekend with another system behind it that could eventually become Tropical Storm Bill.

While the weather stayed quiet for most of us across southern Colorado today, strong storms hit the Colorado/Kansas border with some heavy rain. Our Rain Vision estimates show about 3 inches of rain in parts of Prowers County where a flood advisory was in effect.

I’m going to talk a little bit about Louisville, KY. They had crazy flooding on Tuesday of this week. Record-breaking rains fell in Jefferson County with rainfall rates of 8.8 inches per hour falling at times Tuesday morning! There were no fatalities or major injuries reported, but several water rescues. In Louisville about 200 people were rescued from the tops of cars and houses. Water was reported several feet deep in parts of Louisville. Major water damage was reported in area hospitals, the public library, University of Louisville and homes. I’m not only interested in this because I love weather but also because I am racing my first Ironman in Louisville, KY 3 weeks from today! So of course I’m going to continue to check the status of the city!
Here are some pics from the National Weather Service and other witnesses.

Right now the story in Louisville is clean-up.

Photos of double rainbows abounded in Pueblo earlier this evening. The top two are from a husband/wife team that is always trying to out-do each other with weather pictures. The lower two are courtesy of Steve Hodanish, a senior meteorologist at our local National Weather Service office in Pueblo. I got a question on twitter from @SchwartzNow that asked what caused a double rainbow. These occur when light inside a raindrop ir reflected twice instead of just once as is typically the case. This causes the secondary bow. It is always the outer bow,  as it ends up at a greater angle than the primary bow. Its always fainter and the colors are INVERTED from the primary bow. Red ends up on the inside of the set and blue is on the outside. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the area between the two bows is a little darker than the rest of the sky. This is called Alexander’s dark band. It contains less light than other areas of the sky, because the light has been bent away from this area…

Below on the left you see how light refracts and reflects as it enters/travels in/exits a raindrop when one rainbow is present. While this process still happens when two rainbows occur, a second rainbow is created by light that is reflecting twice while inside the raindrop. Note that some of the light escapes out of the raindrop on each reflection so with two reflections the secondary appears fainter than the primary. It also exits at a larger angle compared to the incoming light, which is why they are separated when you see them.

Also on twiiter today, @sarah719 took a picture of some iridescent clouds, you see here picture on the left. I described the colors as looking like a soap bubble, I put another example on the right. This iridescence occurs in thin clouds that have water droplets of the same size. If its cold enough for ice, we’ll end up with sun dogs…

Last week was a wet one. I report for news 3 days a week and one or our stories this week was flash flooding in Fountain. Here are some pics sent to us by a homeowner on Jimmy Camp Rd. He lives in a new development where they have been experiencing drainage problems during big storms.




Once all of the water dried up, this neighborhood was left with a muddy mess!
We will dry out this week with much warmer temperatures.