Colorado Weather: Few Microburst Storms Possible Saturday Along With More Record Highs

DENVER (CBS4) - Happy Saturday! It'll be another very warm day around Colorado and we could even just call it hot for places like Denver and the eastern plains. For the third day in a row we could see some record highs.

Something we haven't talked about for quite some time though, is the chance to see a few afternoon thunderstorms. It is a small chance but we have it. Because we have so much dry air near the surface, evident by low dew points, any storms that form will have high cloud bases, which means there will be a lot of evaporation of any rain that falls. When this happens we see virga from the ground.

The evaporation of rain mid-air creates a cold pocket of air above the ground. Because cold air is heavy and dense it will rush to the ground. This leads to microbursts and the potential to see wind gusts in excess of 58 mph, which is one of the criteria for a severe thunderstorm.

Because of this set up, the Storm Prediction Center has issued an outlook for a marginal risk to see a severe storm on the northeast plains today. We'll have to keep a close eye on any storm activity around Denver International Airport in case there is any impact to flights.

The first of two cold fronts will move into Colorado by Sunday. It will keep the chance for a few afternoon storms in the forecast, but it will also cool us down.

Then by Tuesday we get an even stronger cold front and a much more substantial blast of cooler air. In Denver the high may not even get into the upper 70s.

The cooler weather will be short lived as we pop right back into the 80s and lower 90s before the end of the upcoming week. At this point we still don't see a major cold front that will be strong enough to bring sweater weather and mountain snow, but it will happen soon enough, so stay tuned!