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Daily brief · Thursday, August 20

Thursday is the last clean day before the weekend turns, and if you have any flexibility left this is the day to spend high. The Lake County zone forecast issued 7:53 PM Wednesday has mostly sunny, a 10 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms, highs 71 to 79 and northwest winds around 10 mph. Open-Meteo caps the day at 9 percent. Sunrise 6:23, sunset 7:53, low near 50, UV 8.4. Above 11,000 feet the same story at 62 to 70. Up high Thursday reads Hope Pass 45 to 62 F, Mosquito Pass 40 to 59, Mt. Elbert 37 to 56, and the wind is a morning problem rather than an evening one: gusts peak 20 to 25 mph between 9 and 11 AM and ease through the afternoon. Now the part worth your attention. Saturday's headline number is 87 percent on Open-Meteo and 80 percent in the zone forecast, and almost nobody reading those is reading them correctly, because a daily figure is a maximum, not a schedule. Both sources agree on the timing and both put the wet part after noon. The NWS gridded forecast for Leadville, updated 7:51 PM Wednesday, publishes precipitation probability in six-hour blocks: 1 percent from midnight to 6 AM, 2 percent from 6 AM to noon, 77 percent from noon to 6 PM, 56 percent from 6 PM to midnight. Open-Meteo's hourly series says the same thing with a sharper edge, 0 to 1 percent from 1 AM through noon, then 87 percent from 1 PM through 6 PM and 56 percent from 7 PM to midnight. Understand what that resolution is: at roughly sixty hours of lead time both products are delivered in blocks, so treat the 1 PM edge as early afternoon, not as a timestamp. What it means for the Run. The gun is 4 AM, so noon is hour eight. On the official cutoff ladder a runner exactly on cutoff pace is at Half Pipe, mile 31.8, at 12:15 PM, at Twin Lakes outbound at 2:15 PM, on Hope Pass at 4:45 PM and at Winfield at 6:50 PM. In other words the entire published back half of the outbound schedule, including both Hope crossings for anyone in the second half of the field, sits inside the wettest block of the day. At Hope Pass elevation the modeled hourly numbers run 42 F before dawn, near 69 by midday, 89 percent precipitation probability from 1 PM to 6 PM, and then the number that matters most: 49 F at 6 PM, 45 at 7, and 41 F from 8 to 10 PM with precipitation odds still above 50 percent. Cold rain at 12,548 feet after dark is a different race than cold rain at noon. Front of the field gets most of its day in the dry window; everyone else should pack for the afternoon they are actually going to run. One more thing, said plainly because we published the disagreement on Wednesday. The NWS Pueblo hazardous weather outlook, issued 11:27 AM Wednesday, said showers and thunderstorms would be possible every afternoon and evening Thursday through Tuesday, while the Lake County zone forecast carried 10 percent for Thursday. Tonight's gridded data resolves it rather than leaving it open: the regional product was describing an afternoon and evening pattern, and the county numbers, read at the right time resolution, agree with it. The 7-day strip on the site now shows this directly. Under each day's precipitation percentage you will find the hours that percentage actually applies to, computed from that day's own hourly probabilities. Air quality Thursday runs 22 to 42 with PM2.5 topping at 4.2 micrograms per cubic meter. Clean air, not haze. Anglers, the Arkansas at Granite was 63.1 F at 8:45 PM Wednesday, under the 65 F trout-stress line for the first evening in a week, after running from 58.6 to 68.7 F across the day. Tuesday evening it hit 69.3. Halfmoon Creek is 58.5 F and 7.78 cfs, easing off Wednesday midday's 8.07, and the Arkansas near Leadville is 11.3 cfs. Fish the morning, and if Saturday afternoon delivers, expect the flows to move. Roads. Thursday is the heaviest construction day of race week on the approaches, unchanged on tonight's 9 PM COtrip pull. Three zones run 7 AM to 7 PM: paving from CO 82 at Twin Lakes to County Road 385 west of Buena Vista, MP 192.7 to 202, 12 ft width limit and up to 15 minutes; resurfacing north of town from County Road 21 to CO 91, MP 170 to 174, 11 ft and up to 20 minutes; and Minturn, MP 148 to 148.5, same hours and limits. The one that never stops is Minturn to Red Cliff, MP 152.5 to 154, posted continuously through 11:59 PM Saturday, which puts it in place at 3 AM on race morning for anyone driving down from I-70. The Arkansas River bridge at MP 213.5 near Johnson Village is one lane with full stops and 15 to 20 minute delays through Aug 23. Both corridor surfaces are dry, operator-confirmed on US 24 and CO 91 at 5:46 PM Wednesday. Driving crew in Thursday outside 7 AM to 7 PM skips three of the five. Notices are unchanged tonight; the Leadville Ranger District alert list was re-read at 9 PM and carries nothing new, and no special-event road order has been posted for the Run the way one was for the MTB. Friday sits at 30 percent, with its own wet window in the same early-afternoon slot.