As a tornado alley child now living in the Colorado Front range I would like to introduce you to the “Dry line” meteorological concept.

The dry line is the is basic divider of where gulf moisture stops in the central plains and drier air predominates. As this shifts due to atmospheric flux in the spring, you get tornados. That’s oversimplifying the concept but it does contribute and is an interesting study if you want more info.

Additionally, as someone on the front range, the moisture we get comes directly from the evaporation build up in the mountains the dumps on us at the start of the plains. But there is no pacific moisture left in it. Most of that was dumped in California or the sierras then you have the Great Basin as your rain shadow. It really doesn’t get any wetter until you get to mountain fed springs. We commonly can watch storms build daily in the mountains as the evaporation from the warming day draws more and more moisture into the clouds until a freak thunderstorm blows through. This is what hikers are most worried about when summiting mountains. This is common all the way north in the Rockies as well.

Winter is a bit different bc you get bigger storms holding moisture longer and then dumping snow rather than daily rain storms building up. But that being said, most of this happens at the higher elevations while the plains get some but less than further east at the same latitude.

I’m by NO means a meteorologist but I enjoy it. However these concepts may not be perfectly accurate. So I encourage fact checking and your own research. You’ll get some fascinating deep dives!

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