07-31-24 Interview - Weather Wednesday with FOX31's Dave Fraser

WEATHER WEDNESDAY AT 12:30 And I'm going to make Fox 31's Dave Fraser use his Secret Weather Machine to blow the smoke out for this weekend. Or not.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dave Fraser from Box thirty one. Okay, Dave, you got
the smoke out last weekend for the weekend, and I
need you to turn your Smoknator dial and go ahead
and send it somewhere else for this weekend too. Can
you do that for me?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah? I actually think we'll start to see that later
tonight and tomorrow. Gain. Yeah, here's the thing, and I
know we're short on time, so a little bit of
good news, but it's not immediate. It is on the horizon,
so you may not notice it nowhere on anybody else.
But we had a week cold front come in this morning.
By that, I mean we're dropping temperatures maybe three or
four degrees. You're not going to notice the difference in

(00:34):
the heat. Humidity levels are still low. So when we
talk about fire weather conditions, we look at three things.
Warm temperatures, humidity, and wind that is the driving force.
That cold front that came in has switched the wind
to an easterly direction, so for the last couple of days,
we've had a westerly wind kind of blowing on the
back side of these fires off to the west of Denver.
That smoke is what you're seeing outside today. This easterly

(00:57):
wind will become a southeasterly wind tomorrow and that will
push the fire back up the foothills and disperse the smoke.
So I think you will notice the conditions down here
at lower elevations and in the foothills close of the fire.
There's still going to be air quality concerns for smoke,
but down here we should not misimprovement as soon as tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Any chance of rain in the forecast for this weekend
that can help with these fires.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yes, And that's the other thing with the cold front,
So we're going to turn the wind to the south
and east. That eds in higher humidity and even higher
humidity that if we can't yield rain. You hail the
fire officials talking about conditions cooler temperatures, lighter wind, and
higher humidity. A higher humidity helps to suppress the fire,
doesn't extinguish it, but it's like a mistiss the moistures

(01:42):
in the moisture is in the air. Now. I do
have a chance in the mountains that they could see
scattered storms starting tomorrow and every single day moving forward
for the next week. Down here at lower elevations, I
think southsiders over the Palmer divide, So think of four
to seventy in South could get a storm or two
tomorrow and there could be pockets of heavy rain. Friday,

(02:03):
I think is a better chance for scatters from Saturdays
looking dry. Sunday's not great, But then next week Monday,
Tuesday looks fantastic, Wednesday looks great, Thursday looks great, Friday
looks good. I think we're going to tap into the monsoons.
Temperatures are going to drop into the eighties as early
as Tuesday, and I think over that four day period,

(02:24):
the front range in the foothills could be looking at
an inch or an inch and a half more in
the foothills, and we could be looking at a half
to three quarters of an inch and moisture over that
four day period. That would be fantastic, And that's what
we're focusing our forecast on.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
That is what we're all hoping for. That would be
absolutely out incredible. I was reading yesterday, Dave. I've got
about a minute and a half here. There is a massive,
the largest I think in California history, firefire fire out there,
and they've got no rain in the forecast, and this
thing is like one hundred and eighty five thousand acres
or some crazy amount like that. Yeah, are they going

(02:57):
to be able? Is anything coming their way now?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
The pattern isn't shifting for them. It's beneficial for us
here in Colorado. I don't know that they're going to
get much help. And when you're dealing with that larger
of an acreage fire, you really need a big, big
storm system. All we need right now is to get
a handle on it. The fire's behavior today. It's always
erradic in the fire, but the lighter winds are definitely happening.
I mean, look outside right now, you'll notice things aren't moving,

(03:24):
and so you know, the wind is like a billow
on a fire right in the claims, and we don't
want to do that. I think we're going to see
improvement here. The challenge for the firefighters, as you guys
have been reporting, is the rugged terrain that's to be
an air support, so they're attacking it from the air,
but they're defending on the ground the property, the local
firefighters and stuff. So my hope is that we can

(03:44):
contain it and not have to be talking about additional
depths or additional loss of property as we saw with
the Stone Canyon fire yesterday. We could see it on
the air with our helicopter. When you see black smoke,
the fire has hit something combustible. That can be a car,
it can be a home with chemicals in it. The
white smoke, the dingy smoke, that's the wildfire. But when
you see black smoke, you hit something different. And we

(04:06):
were watching that happen yesterday.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Unfortunately, I hope we don't see a whole lot more
black smoke. Thanks a lot, Dave. We'll talk to you
next week.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
My friend Ah, take care, Magine, all right.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
That's Dave Frasier of Fox thirty one.