Extended Forecast Outlook: Warm and dry for the next 10-15 days before it gets active again

09/30/26 6pm: Well if you like sunny, warm and dry weather in October then you will like the forecast over the next 10-15 days lol. If you want some snow and cold (like I do), we are going to have wait a bit for that..

Models show a big ridge of high pressure dominating the weather pattern over the western U.S over the next 10+ days before it likely gets active again towards mid-October.

Now its not uncommon to have a multi-week warm and dry stretch in parts of September or October (even on non El Nino years). And given we just had an active and rainy September (for most of the state), its not uncommon to have a break with drier weather during the fall. But it is going to get hot again for the lower elevations and I'm not excited about that!

Basically looking at very warm and mostly sunny conditions form Fri, Oct 2nd through Sat Oct 10th. Hottest temps for Den/Bou and lower elevations will be Sat through much of next week with high temps back in the mid-80s (ugh). Sunny, with some wind at times.

And it looks dry. For example looking at the forecast meteogram for Berthoud Pass (image 3), it basically shows mostly dry conditions over the next 15 days, with a little bit around Oct 10/11 and then towards Oct 14/15 but it ain't much at all (could change).

As I mentioned, next chance for at least some weather maybe a cold-front will initially around Oct 10th-11th. Then looking a ways out, maybe some stronger upper-level lows around Oct 15th-16th but that is so far out, who knows.

In the meantime it will be a great couple weeks to go outside hike, bike, camp, leaf peep, climb some 14ers, etc.

I still do think we will get into a much more active pattern (per the strong El Nino) but that may not arrive until Nov into early Dec.

As I mentioned to others, the winter jet-stream pattern is not at all established yet (that will happen likely closer to Nov).

Overall strongest signals for an active patter actually show up from Jan-Apr so it could be that the most frequent storms are during later winter / spring.

Going to be interesting to see how this all plays out!

Later we will look at month-to-date precip total for CO, I just looked at PRISM and parts of the San Juans picked up 8-12" of rain during the month of Sep!

What are your thoughts on the hot and dry pattern coming up? PTSD lol?

First image loop show the evolution of the weather pattern over the next 15 days via 500mb height anomalies (we want to see the deep blues for a big storm / cold temps). Second image shows forecast high/low temps for Boulder over the next 15 days from ECMWF. Third image shows Max/Min 6Hr 2M Temp. + QPF + Snow for Berthoud Pass over the next 15 days. Image 4 shows the 6-10 day outlook from NCEP (NOAA).