Denver weather: Why hot days have higher chances for hail, severe storms
Summer marks monsoon season for Colorado and some nearby southwestern states. It typically lasts from about mid-June to the end of September, with regular afternoon thunderstorms bringing wind, rain, lightning and hail.
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The storms bring a brief cooldown after warm daytime temperatures, and are likely to be more severe with hotter temperatures.
FOX31 Pinpoint Weather Meteorologist Travis Michels explains that hotter temperatures create a more unstable environment in the atmosphere.
Cold air sinks and settles, which creates a stable environment, while hot air rises, mixing up the air and creating an unstable environment.
'Hot air rises, cools and condenses, and it drops again, then you get air moving all around and it gets wild,' Michels said.
One result is differences in temperature and pressure, which create the wind that comes with afternoon storms.
Another result is hail. Michels explained that when storms roll over the foothills and clash with hot air along the Front Range, it brings in air cold enough to keep things freezing higher in the storm cloud. Meanwhile, air that has been heating all day near the ground keeps pushing moisture up.
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Storms that were stable and may have brought light rain to the high country are then fueled by the heat at lower elevations along the Front Range, similar to how tropical storms and hurricanes are fueled by hot water.
'Technically, coming down in elevation is a warming, drying process, but if it warms, you're just heating the ground here still,' Michels said. 'So then it's gonna want to go back up, so then you're just creating this cycle kind of a thing, so that's kind of the easiest way to describe daily thunderstorms — with cold air coming up hot air coming up, and it's a prime environment for hail because it's definitely cold enough because we're coming off of the mountains,' Michels said.
That is why Colorado experiences more frequent hail compared to other areas where monsoons are common. In fact, Michels said a lot of the precipitation that comes out of clouds, even at lower elevations, comes out frozen before it melts on the way down.
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Water droplets that are below freezing but still in liquid form get pushed up and other droplets cling onto them. The droplets accumulate and the forming hailstone rises until it freezes, then it gets too heavy and starts falling again. This process can repeat multiple times before the hailstone falls to the ground.
When the moisture freezes depends on how high the clouds are. Michels explained that a cloud can vary from 20 degrees below zero, to zero degrees, and 32 degrees in different layers of the atmosphere. The back-and-forth heating and cooling process that sends chunks of hail up and down creates visible layers in the hailstone that hits the ground.
Coloradans should be prepared for the state's famous moody and unpredictable weather on any day. Even if it is warm with clear clouds in the morning, the heat could increase the chances for afternoon storms to become more severe.
Denver, Colorado weather resources
Stay prepared for storms and forecast changes, a Pinpoint Weather Alert Day and other important weather information:
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The Pinpoint Weather team will continue to update the forecast multiple times each day.
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