Virga bombs possible in Colorado on Wednesday. #weatherupdate

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Not all thunderstorm days are the same in Colorado. Hi everybody, I am Matt Meister with Peaks to Plains Weather.

[00:00:05]This update brought to you by Peak Alerts. You need three ingredients for thunderstorms. We have two of them almost every day during the warmer months of the year because of how the terrain in the mountains warms up, it creates what we call steep lapse rates.

[00:00:18]The temperatures in the upper levels of the atmosphere, that rate of cooling is greater than other parts of the country.

[00:00:24]And we have lift because in the afternoons, most of the wind is going up the mountain slopes. And so that terrain helps to force the atmosphere vertically. What we're missing some days, in particular at the surface, is moisture. Now on Wednesday, we've got some water coming in from the Pacific in the mid levels of the atmosphere. We'll use those lapse rates to build some clouds. Enough so that we'll get some rain to start leaving the cloud bases.

[00:00:50]We might even catch a thunderstorm over the Palmer Divide or the Raton Mesa near New Mexico late in the day or early in the evening. What's going to happen to a lot of those raindrops though is because they are falling into some really dry air below the base of the cloud, it'll evaporate. Evaporation's a cooling process that makes the air more dense.

[00:01:09]Because of gravity, it's heavy, it rushes down to the surface, hits the ground, spreads out in all directions.

[00:01:14]It's like if you took a cup of water and you dumped it out on the table, it just goes everywhere. Well, on Wednesday, some of those virga bombs, as I like to call them, could produce some gusts around 30 or 35 mph. And if we get a thunderstorm, they might even be stronger than that. Something to be aware of.