Colorado Weather: Overnight Fire Threat Into Monday And Beyond
DENVER(CBS)- Our current weather pattern is in the process of setting up what may be several days of critical fire danger across many areas of Colorado including the Denver metro area to start on Monday. On the big weather map we have a strong ridge of high pressure out east that is going to back up the west to east flow across the nation thru most of the week ahead.
This will keep a digging low pressure trough over the west coast with wind producing jet stream diving in between right into the Central Rockies. The nose of the jet will be pushing into the state overnight Sunday into Monday. The pressure gradient between the trough and the ridge along with the strong upper level winds will enhance the gusts over most of the region. There are wind advisories posted for western areas thru Monday morning for wind gust up to 70 mph.
Along with the West there are High Wind Warnings for parts of the central and southern mountains for wind gusts 70 to 85 mph Sunday night thru noon Monday.
With the wind expected to ramp up overnight into Monday a large part of our state including some of Denver's southern and western suburbs have a rare overnight threat of fire danger. The National Weather Service is keeping Sunday's Red Flag Warning going for most of southern Colorado up into Jefferson, Douglas and Elbert counties going into the the night thru 9pm Monday night!
Then on Monday in addition to the Red Flag Warning there is a Fire Weather Watch posted for the Denver metro area up thru Greeley and out over the northeastern plains from 10am to 9pm on Monday. This will most likely be switched over to a Red Flag Warning late Sunday night or Monday morning. Winds in the Denver metro area may gust from 30 to 35 mph with 50 to 55 mph winds in and near the foothills.
The entire pattern is expected to stay in place thru the middle of the week ahead.
In anticipation of this there is another Fire Weather Watch already in place for Tuesday over 2/3rds of the state.
The area under the watch may expand as we get closer to Tuesday and at this time Wednesday may also be another fire danger day as record high temperatures are expected along with the wind by mid-week.
