First Look at Possible Patterns

Actually, it is not my first look.   But at least we are within 10 days of our arrival in the Plains.   The operational runs of the models start to provide value at around 10 days.  But the ensembles do an even better job, particularly the Ensemble Mean when the spread between the solutions is relatively small.

Here's the ensemble mean forecast for 312 h, which would be the morning of May 20.  This is a 500 mb chart, and you can infer something about the winds at around 18000 feet from it.   It looks awfully good for the region from ne Colorado northward, including western Nebraska.That would be great, since those locations are not even a hop, skip and a jump from our entry point in Denver.

Of course, that forecast is still out in science fiction land.   We will have to wait and see, of course.