In Brief:
The heat will hold on longer as the upper level high won't position itself correctly to cool us down (a bit) until Tuesday and beyond - the smoke will remain.
Forecast Discussion:
Smoke is a big deal in Colorado right now as a number of large fires are burning with minimal containment (Figure 1). Pulses of smoke will arrive every afternoon and remain into the evening as daytime heating and drying will allow fires to surge to more vigorous levels. The latest drought index map shows some relief has occurred in the southern counties, but the entire state is under some level of drought condition (Figure 2). The rainfall over the last week only occurred on the far eastern plains of Colorado (Figure 3).
Tropical moisture is still not making it into the northern and northeastern counties of the state (Figure 4) (note the tropical system Elida has dissipated).
We remain completely dry with highs near 100F through the weekend. It looks like the upper level high pressure system and ridge will remain stronger than thought earlier in the week (Figure 5). Sorry!
The Longer Range Forecast:
The precipitation expected over the next 5 days is really meager to none for the northwestern half of the state (Figure 6).
The change in the weather expected for Sunday now seems to occur by Tuesday. The high center will have moved to northern Arizona by then (Figure 7) and will bring moisture up and around through the mountains (Figure 8). The GFS does give the state a small amount of water, overall, over the next 10 days (Figure 9).
