Rifle, CO Weather Forecast
Garfield County, Colorado
Seven-day outlook
36–63°F across the weekThe week runs between 36° and 63°, with tomorrow the warmest day of it. The second half leans cooling, and Monday is the coolest day in it. Sunday is the wettest day, peaking near 95%. 3 of the 7 days stay dry.
Forecasts come from the National Weather Service's own computer models, and current conditions from the nearest reporting weather station. Both are served through the weather API. A forecast is guidance, not a warning, and anything the Weather Service has actually issued is on the live map.
The written summaries on this page are generated from the forecast data above, not by a meteorologist. Each sentence is a reading of the same numbers you can see, and no forecaster has reviewed them.
About the Rifle forecast
Rifle sits at 39.5376°N, 107.7703°W in Garfield County, Colorado. The forecast above is drawn for that point from the National Weather Service's own computer models: a seven-day outlook, and a finer-grained one covering the next eighteen hours where it reaches, and the radar and alert panels show what the Weather Service has out over the area right now.
- County
- Garfield County
- Coordinates
- 39.5376°N, 107.7703°W
- Population
- 10,563 · 2023 estimate
- Land area
- 7.007 sq mi
Place data from the US Census Bureau. Coordinates are the Census internal point for Rifle, and the forecast is for that location, not for every address inside the city limits, and a large city can have real weather differences from one side to the other.
How well can the network see Rifle?
The nearest Doppler radar is KGJX (Grand Junction, CO), 41 miles to the SW. A WSR-88D's lowest routine scan sits half a degree above horizontal, and the earth curves away beneath it, so by the time that beam reaches Rifle its center is about 2,700 ft above ground. That is comfortably inside the useful range. The lowest scan passes low enough over Rifle to show rotation in the part of a storm where tornadoes actually form. Rifle is closer to its radar than 55% of US cities.
The closest instrument actually measuring the air is KRIL · Rifle/Garfield Cnty on the ASOS/AWOS network, 2.8 miles away. Close enough that its readings are, for practical purposes, the conditions in town.
Beam height is the standard 4/3-earth approximation for the 0.5° scan and assumes normal refraction; it is where the center of the beam is, not its edges, and unusual temperature profiles bend it. Radar siting from the NWS WSR-88D network, station positions from the Colorado observing network as of this build.
Forecasts near Rifle
- Silt, CO6 mi
- New Castle, CO13 mi
- Glenwood Springs, CO23 mi
- Carbondale, CO31 mi
- Basalt, CO40 mi
- Palisade, CO43 mi
- Gypsum, CO44 mi
- Snowmass Village, CO49 mi
Elsewhere in Colorado
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