It looks like Winter may not yet be done with us. After a gorgeous Mother’s Day change is in the air. Monday night a cold front will move into the state bringing a significant drop in temperatures and precipitation to much of the state.
A Winter Storm Watch has already been issued for the northern and central mountains where 6 – 12 inches of snow is possible by at higher elevations. The foothills could receive 4 – 8 inches in some areas.
Here in the Denver metro area, after reaching a high near 70 Monday, temperatures will drop in the evening and a rain / snow mix will begin to fall overnight. By Tuesday morning, this will change to all snow although with the ground being relatively warm, little will accumulate except on grassy areas where we may see 1 to 2 inches. After noon Tuesday as we warm up this will again change to all rain.
We’ll recover a bit Wednesday and warm up to near 60. Thursday again brings unstable air and a 30% chance of precipitation. The good news is that at this point the weekend is looking to be beautiful.
As our May weather preview pointed out, snow and cold in May is not at all unheard of – nor is just about any other possible weather condition. Average May snowfall is 1.3 inches which we have already exceeded but in terms of overall precipitation, we are more than three inches below normal thus far in 2008 due to an unusually dry April. This is seen in the number of Red Flag and Fire Weather Watches we have already seen issued so the precipitation on tap this week should be welcomed.
Lightning is the number two weather killer in the United States (behind floods). Here is Colorado we seem to be particularly blind to the dangers the phenomenom presents as we are ranked #2 in the U.S. for lightning related deaths. Over the years, a number of myths have developed about severe weather safety and lightning in particular. Here’s a few that you may want to keep in mind: 
The one constant about May weather is change. Colorado natives and those that have lived here long enough know that Denver and Colorado weather changes considerably throughout the year. The month of May almost seems to pack an entire year of weather conditions into 31 days. You name it, it can happen. 
A Red Flag Warning has been issued for most of the state as warm temperatures and low humidities have increased the danger of fires getting out of control. This was witnessed first hand last week with the four wildfires in southern Colorado that quickly got out of hand.
Time to get outside this weekend! The forecast looks absolutely beautiful with a high of 76 expected on Saturday and 72 on Sunday. This is why we all love Colorado. 
Springtime in Colorado! Tuesday the official high in Denver hit 82 degrees, just two degrees shy of the record for that date. At ThorntonWeather.com we were a bit warmer with a high of 85.1 degrees. Now, 24 hours later, we are preparing for a pretty decent snowstorm. What fun! 
Website note: Some of you may have noticed our conditions and statistics not updating yesterday starting around 11:30am. We apologize for the problem but our DSL line was down. Qwest of course couldn’t explain why but it miraculously started working again last night. While our website is connected directly to the Internet and stayed up and running, we need the DSL line to update the site with the information from our weather sensors. We apologize for the downtime.