Mid-Week Storm To Bring Month's Worth Of Precipitation To Parts Of Colorado

DENVER (CBS4) - The weather system we've been talking about for several days in Colorado's Weather Center is finally here and it arrived with a bang.

PHOTO GALLERY: Rain, Snow Falls In Colorado

Many locations saw afternoon and evening thunderstorms on Tuesday that produced locally heavy rain, small hail and intense lightning.

One storm briefly turned severe in Yuma County near the Kansas state line Tuesday evening. It produced hail the size of dimes and dropped extremely heavy rain that prompted a flash flood warning.

We've seen round one of the rain and snow move through and there could be a few more rounds to go before things start to dry out a bit this weekend.

As of 6:30 a.m. Wednesday several of the computer forecast models used in Colorado's Weather Center were showing the potential for another inch or more of rain in the Denver area by Thursday night.

Denver's normal October precipitation is 1.02 inches. Before this storm moved in only 0.19 inches had fallen.

There is a wintry side to this storm system but you have to climb pretty high in elevation to find it. Some of Colorado's high country above 10,000 feet will pick up close to a foot or more of snow before all is said and done.

By law truckers and commercial vehicles must carry chains between October through winter on Interstate 70 over the mountains. Police and state troopers were inspecting trucks Wednesday on Vail Pass. If they didn't have chains they were cited with a $67 ticket. While CBS4's Matt Kroschel was there he witnessed several truckers get ticketed as troopers had a zero tolerance policy.

The rain couldn't have had better timing as much of Colorado was starting to dry out.

As of October 13, according to the National Drought Monitor, 34% of the state was abnormally dry.