Dakota Ridge, CO Weather

Key messages

- Areas of fog, some dense, across the plains and I-25 Corridor tonight into Tuesday morning.

- Warmer and mostly dry much of this week.

- Unsettled weather potentially returning late in the weekend and early next week, with a 20-30% chance of season's first snow in lower elevations toward Tuesday.

.DISCUSSION /Through Monday/: Issued at 123 PM MDT Mon Oct 26 2026

The upper level trough that brought the overnight/early morning rain and mountain snow is pushing well to our northeast, with drier and more subsident airmass building in behind it. However, abundant low level moisture remained in place east of the Front Range, with the stratus deck only slowly burning off. While we do expect more clearing through the late afternoon hours, areas of low clouds and fog will redevelop tonight in the moist boundary layer. This will be a hybrid radiational/advection fog event, with contributions from a developing weak Denver Cyclone. The expected location of the cyclone developing near/south of metro Denver and pushing slowly northeast overnight into early Tuesday morning favors fog over the eastern and northern plains, but then also wrapping around the back side of the cyclone down the I-25 Corridor into at least the northern suburbs by/shortly after midnight. There's a 50-60% chance it moves as far south as the southern Denver suburbs before daybreak. Given the hybrid event and relatively narrow T/Td spreads, we think some areas will experience dense fog. It's quite difficult to narrow the exact locations of thickest fog development, but something to watch for the overnight and early morning hours with potential for a Dense Fog Advisory. We'll continue to monitor through the evening and overnight.

On Tuesday, we're not sure that we'll see the magnitude of warming we earlier anticipated. That's because of the morning stratus and fog, and lack of lee troughing. We've generally cut temperatures a few degrees across the lower elevations but still mostly lower to mid 60s for highs (but a 30-40% chance we only hit the mid to upper 50s over the eastern plains). What we are more certain about is that tomorrow will start a 3-4 day stretch of dry weather.

That dry weather will be courtesy of drier and brisk west to southwest flow aloft. There will be warm advection and flat ridging by Thursday, which should support highs pushing to near 70F across the plains and I-25 Corridor.

Ensembles are still showing a subtropical push or partial remnants (or at least water vapor transport) of Tropical Storm Vance in the eastern tropical Pacific getting drawn up as early as Friday. However, the main impacts of this would very likely (>80%) chance stay to the east of our forecast area. We'll only have a slight chance of showers reaching the far eastern plains by late Friday.

A larger trough along with a possible subtropical moisture connection/jet off the central and eastern Pacific reaches the far southwest U.S. by late Saturday and Sunday. While that is fairly well agreed upon by ensemble systems, models diverge significantly by the time we reach Sunday into early next week. Yes, there is general troughiness and storminess expected, but some models move the trough through as an open or even shearing wave, while others develop a deep closed low somewhere between the Midwest and Colorado. It was interesting to note the EPS showed a rather marked increase in precipitation and even snow potential as we head toward Tuesday of next week, while the GEFS showed no discernible trend. The EPS had close to 30% of the members showing snow for Denver and the plains, while GEFS supported much lower odds (10-20%). Some of these runs, of course, were much colder than the vast majority of the ensembles, as evidenced in the large temperature variations (25th-75th percentiles from highs in the mid 40s to mid 60s for Monday and Tuesday, but full range of outcomes from highs in the upper 20s to lower 70s). Stay tuned for the latest trends and what could maybe, just maybe, be our first snowfall in the lower elevations should the deeper/slower solutions verify.

.AVIATION /18Z TAFS through 18Z Tuesday/: Issued at 1215 PM MDT Mon Oct 26 2026

Current GOES-19 satellite imagery shows the stratus deck that affected the sites this morning breaking up with the south metro (KAPA) seeing the most improvements so far. Still, with the saturated ground from the overnight rainfall/mist and low-level moisture, clouds will have a difficult time fully scattering out this afternoon. Therefore, we expect a sct deck around 1500 ft AGL to 3000 ft AGL through mid-afternoon, but some improvements look possible as we get to late in the afternoon. KAPA should have fewer clouds than the other two sites. Winds this afternoon will turn to the east and should remain under 12 kts.

Another night of fog is looking increasingly likely (>70%) at KDEN and KBJC with 50/50 odds at KAPA. BUFKIT and model soundings continue to point to saturated low levels with dewpoint depressions at or under 1 degree. A Denver Cyclone is progged to develop to the north of the three sites this evening and move off to the northeast. This would cause a westerly component to the wind at all three sites with light and vrb winds as we get into Tuesday morning. In turn, short-term guidance is in very strong agreement that fog could rapidly develop this evening as early as 6-8z from north to south on the north/west side of the cyclone. The period of highest confidence at KDEN for visibility around 1/2 SM and IFR/LIFR restrictions is from 9z through about 14z. There is a ~30% chance that visibility could even drop as low as 1/4 SM with vv001 causing further restrictions. Generally, the same timing is expected for KBJC with only slightly higher visibility/ceilings than KDEN. At KAPA, winds could be a little more southerly (downslope), which would lower overall chances for impactful fog directly at the terminal. Otherwise, if winds do keep more of a westerly component, fog/low ceilings/lowered visibility are in play there as well.

The fog and low ceilings should start to lift by about 15z Tuesday, but sct clouds around 1000 to 2000 ft AGL look to stick around for a few more hours. VFR conditions appear possible by 18-20z Tuesday afternoon as skies clear. Winds turn to the east for Tuesday afternoon before becoming vrb by the evening.

Watches, warnings and advisories

None.