05-22-24 Interview - Weather Wednesday with FOX31 Chief Meteorologist Dave Fraser

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Where we ask our crack meteorologist DaveFrasier of Fox thirty one, all kinds
of questions. Good afternoon, sir. I have nothing to complain about the
weather today today. Okay, gooddata. Yeh oh, it's glorious outside.
If I could do my show fromoutside on the balcony, I sure
would know what. Everybody take resetsand go outside for a little bit.

(00:20):
Well, I'm going to jump rightin because if I don't ask this question
now, it might roll off thebottom of the text line. Hi,
Mandy, please ask Dave Saturday afternoonsforecast. My wife and I are hosting
a wedding reception in our backyard.Thanks Mandy. Love the show Where they
are? Did they say where theyare? No? No, they did

(00:40):
not. Okay, Well, ifthey're listening in there along the front range,
yes, I would prepare for stormson Saturday we have I'll just lay
out the forecast as is. Friday, we have a cold front coming in
so early morning, so we'll belike sixty eight to seventy really a plug
day and a low low chance ofa shower of thunderstorm on Friday. Saturday

(01:03):
and Sunday do have slightly better chances, and Saturday's a little higher than Sunday.
And to put it into perspective,I'm talking thirty forty percent chances for
scattered storms at a decent percentage,believe it or not. And then on
Sunday it's more like thirty percent.So there will be wet weather up and
down the front range. I'm lookingat possibility of severe. It doesn't appear

(01:25):
that that's the setup that we have, so it would be showers, thunderstorms,
you'll get rain. Biggest problem withoutdoor venues at this time of the
year is the gusty wind that mightcome with them, So if you're dealing
with the tang, you've got decorationsor something like that. Always a problem
for graduations at this time of theyear when families want to be outside.
So yeah, I would caution anybodySaturday or Sunday to have a backup plan

(01:46):
for any outdoor activity between two andabout seven two to a typical timeframe.
Monday right now is looking well.Monday. Monday's a funny one because I
was just sitting here looking at theforecast and I'm looking at chances. I
kept Monday Drive the last few daysand I'll here, you can play forecast
with me. Then Okay, I'vegot it. I've got a low humidity

(02:07):
levels about seventy two to seventy five, and the computer models that I've been
looking at vary between four and abouttwelve percent chance a very tiny, tiny
chance for storms. I played theforecast dry. I'm thinking of keeping it
drive but ya and adding a tenpercent chance. You know, I would
just say a small chance, likea tiny chance, but you're still sounds

(02:30):
like we're still going to be Yeah, because Memorial Day, we're still going
to be able to enjoy our barbecueor outdoor any of that stuff, right,
yeah, So we may add ina ten percent chance on Monday,
just to account for that, becauseit is a holiday, because a lot
of people do celebrate and have outdooractivities. Because I don't want somebody to
think it's completely dry and then getcaught off guard. And while the chances

(02:52):
are very, very low, sometimesyou have to air on the side of
well, I'd rather be wrong atten percent, right, you know,
or wrong at ten percent and tosay you're not going to get rain and
it rains. They are in Denver. But let me ask, are these
going to be kind of like we'vehad over the last few days, like
passing storms where you may have somerain, then a break, then rain.
Okay, so it's going to bea little bit of that. Yeah,

(03:14):
it's scattered and sometimes what will happenis you'll get one storm and another
one will form and come in yourdirection. And we saw this yesterday with
the cooler atmosphere, so you getthe rain showers and then the sun comes
out, but the humidity is stillhigh and that time actually keeps up additional
showers. So we'll kind of bein that environment where you're not going to
get just one and done. Youmay get one and then another one and

(03:36):
another one. But it's the scatterednature of the storm. So if you're
in the Denver area, they'll comeoff the foothills and kind of head east
onto the plane. So let meask you about what I experienced yesterday.
So I had, of course,my daughter, her birthday was yesterday.
She got some gift cards that wereburned in a hole in her pocket.
So off we go to target.I come out of Target, it is

(03:58):
it's not raining, not snowing.As I walked quickly to my car,
I was pelted with what felt likesuper soft snowballs. Okay, so not
tiny gropple snowballs. Those are hardand those kind of hurt sometimes. This
was like they'd hit you and gospoosh like that. What is that?
It was probably groppl but it waslighter instead of being spongy and squishy,

(04:20):
because I could see it on radarI was tracking stuff on the south side.
We actually had a patch of hailthat kind of went across Castle Pines
and RidgeGate Parkway and then over towardsParker, and on the radar I could
see the reflectivity was showing me whatlooked like snow. So it was probably
just a wet snowflakes, a flushysnowflake, maybe on the border of groppol

(04:41):
a little bit harder. You mayhave been in the point where it was
kind of a melty snowflake and ithitching its splat, and that's what you
got. Well, they were clearlylooked like snow on the radar. They
were bigger than a snowflake, youknow what I mean, They were like
little, They weren't tiny. Theywere bigger than gropple. But somebody just
asked on the text line, askedDave if this model can predict groppl so
you can see it when it's happening, But can you predict that that could

(05:05):
be coming down the pike. Yes, and no, it's not about the
models being able to pick up onthat. It's about what the atmosphere looks
like as far as temperatures. Soyou know, freezing stuff is the ground
is cold, and so the moisturehits and it freezes on contact, and
then you've got sleep where the colderair is just above the ground a little

(05:27):
more, and so the rain freezesbefore it hits the ground, and so
now you've got the ice belt andit's bouncing. Gropple would be a temperature
profile where maybe not cold enough toget it all the way to a snowflake,
but also not cold enough to freezeit completely right, And so it
depends on the temperature profile. Soyou know, if it's warm all the
way to the ground, then you'vegot rain all the way down. So

(05:48):
it just depends on that profile.So as we look at things, we
do look at temperature profiles from theground up, so we know what kind
of an atmosphere we're dealing with.And radar sometimes will show the reflectivity the
radar technology is just fantastic. Imean, I was watching those big storms
out in northeast Colorado on Monday night, the severe weather and stuff, and

(06:09):
we have the ability to what wecall scope the storm, and we can
see rotation in the center of thestorm. We can see the hail.
And while we can see the estimatedsize of the hail a lot, sometimes
it melts on the way down becausewe can't see down at the surface.
But I was sitting there watching thisthing play out, and those big storms
started producing this large hail and thenthey just kind of stalled out. So

(06:30):
those poor people in Huma, especiallyand Akron and Otis and Eckley and Ray
on the eastern plains, those stormsramped up, they started dumping huge hail.
Then they got to the point wherethey were doing the little hail which
always clogs the drains and then pilesup in the streets. We had a
couple of feet team and the stormswere just stalled out and they were just
proficient at cranking out a lot ofhail. And while we had a tornado

(06:53):
watch on Monday night, and wehad tornado warnings for rotation that we could
see on the radar. Ever,touched down. We had a couple of
funnel reports and that was it,thankfully. But the hail, Yeah,
I'm wondering how the farmers like wherethey are in their crop cycle right now
and how damaging that was. BecauseI know my friend Greg Rophy, he
just planted his watermelons, but Ican't imagine they'd be more than sprouts right

(07:15):
now. So but that I sawthe pictures of some of the hail,
and it was up halfway up theside of cars. I mean, it
was just it was crazy and thebig stuff, obliterated windows, shredded siding
off the sides of homes. Wehad one of our reporters Great Ghetto out
there standing live. He was infront of one of those PVC kind of
white fences right the thing was completelycompletely bombed out and broken and shattered.

(07:41):
Wow, And it just goes toyeah, so, yeah, there's gonna
be crop damage. There's probably Ihaven't heard anything about livestock deaths, but
I imagine I actually read something thismorning that some horses and cows were killed.
I don't know how many, butI did see that that horses and
cows have been killed. One morequestion before we got to let you go
this from our text line. Arethe weather radars used by Dave shared with

(08:05):
the FAA, because I think that'sa really good question. Where does the
FAA get their weather information before deciding, as they did yesterday on a groundstop
situation or something like that. Doyou guys share the same radars or how
does that work? We do?We do. It's the natural weather radar
top of radars. It's a networkacross the country and all of that information

(08:28):
is shared. We have now whatwe call dual pole radars, where with
the radar scans both vertically and horizontally, so we can see more of what
type of precipitation we're dealing with andhow large the hail or the rain drops
are and that can help us estimatehow much rain is wrong. Like we
have rain vision on radar now wherewe can show an estimate of where the
rain fell and how much approximately fellto the ground. So the radar is

(08:52):
very sophisticated. It can see rotations, we can see outflow boundaries, which
is fantastic because in our climate weget these storms that go east of the
metro and then as they kind ofcollapse or fall apart, you get that
gush of wind that kind of comesacross the ground and it can come back
towards Denver, and that can bean initiating point for additional showers and thunderstorms.

(09:13):
And we can watch that stuff inreal time, and you can see
windflow. On calm days, Ican turn the radar on and I can
see which way the wind is blowingoutside today, what direction is coming with.
It's very sensitive. I can evensee snowflakes, not falling snow,
but snow being blown over the ridgesof the mountains. That's how sensitive it
is. So the FAA and theNational Weather Service, obviously governmental properties work

(09:35):
in conjunction to keep the information flowing. One last comment from the text line,
but this doesn't require an answer.This person says, why do you
keep calling him the cheap meteorologist DaveFrasier. Maybe he's just frugal. Well,
I'm actually saying, chief Cheese.We've got a woman. I don't
know if it's the same woman.We've had a woman email in several times

(09:56):
over the last few years with thesame comment. She says, why are
you guys call me day cheap?Not? You know? Does he not
buy lunch? He prefers thrifty.Thank you. Yeah, he prefers thrifty
as I do. Dave Frasier Joyas always. We'll talk to you next
week, my friend. Happy MemorialDay weekend. Everybody all right, you
two buddy, We'll be right back.