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High temps, no rain, but also little wind in the forecast

Greg Masse
Staff Writer

Becoming hotter with no rain.

That’s the official National Weather Service forecast for Glenwood Springs and surrounding areas.

The only good news is that winds are expected to calm during the next few days as a high pressure system moves closer to the region, which should allow fires to lay down somewhat.



“We’re under high pressure,” said Doug Baugh, a weather technician for the NWS. “It looks like wind will be less of a factor in the next few days.”

Baugh explained that as an area becomes more centered in a high-pressure system, the winds lessen.



But the forecast everyone’s looking for – a steady, soaking rain – is nowhere in sight.

“We don’t see anything for the next week or so,” he said.

But there could be hope in the days and weeks to come in the form of monsoon moisture.

“The monsoon moisture is in place in old Mexico and in southern Arizona and New Mexico,” Baugh said.

The high pressure system that’s over Colorado today is keeping that moisture from reaching the areas where it’s so desperately needed.

“If it centered over central Texas, the moisture would circle right up through Arizona and into Colorado,” he said. “Unfortunately the high is going to move westward.

“If we could get that high into the southern high plains, that would be ideal,” he said. “That’s what we call the ring of fire, because the whole periphery (of the high-pressure system) is ringed with thunderstorms and lightning.”

In most years, that pattern tends to begin sometime in July, he said.


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