Allegations that Venezuelan gangs are taking over Aurora, Colorado, which have been deemed “grossly exaggerated” by the city’s mayor, are back on the national stage after a series of Trump campaign appearances over the weekend.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance rehashed the claims in an exchange with ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz Sunday as he stood by the allegations. Speaking with the Ohio Senator on “This Week,” Raddatz asked Vance if he supports former President Donald Trump’s comments saying that immigrants have “invaded” the Colorado city. Trump touted this claim at the September presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, and USA TODAY previously reported that Republican Mayor Mike Coffman denied the notion that members of the gang had “taken over,” characterizing them as “overstated.”

Vance told Raddatz if the claims are exaggerated, “that means there’s gotta be some element of truth here.”

“I’m gonna stop you, because I know exactly what happened,” Raddatz says. ” the incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.”

“Do you hear yourself? On a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs?” Vance replies, accusing Raddatz of “nitpicking” Trump.

More: Searching for voters, Donald Trump goes dark(er) with pre-election rhetoric

Trump spotlights Venezuelan gang claims in Colorado visit

Trump blamed Harris for immigration issues at a rally in Aurora, Colorado Friday, calling the city a “war zone” for the alleged activity of Venezuelan gang members.

At the rally, Trump announced a new plan – dubbed “Operation Aurora” – to remove undocumented immigrants connected to gangs, using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump told the crowd. “We will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country.”

Ahead of Trump’s visit, Coffman said in a statement, “Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city – not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs.”

After Trump’s visit, Coffman said he was disappointed Trump did not get to see more of the city.

“I cannot overstate enough that nothing was said (Friday) that has not been said before and for which the city has not responded with the facts,” Coffman said in a statement shared with USA TODAY. “Again, the reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city – and our state – have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”

Contributing: Jonathan Limehouse

Despite failing to cover for the fifth time in six tries, Arizona football is viewed as a favorite to beat Colorado on Saturday.

Arizona has opened as a 3.5-point favorite, according to FanDuel Sportsbook. The over/under is 56.5 points. The game kicks off at 1 p.m. MST on Fox.

Arizona is 1-5 against the spread this season with the lone cover coming in the UA’s upset win at Utah last month. The under has hit in four of Arizona’s six games.

The Wildcats are 3-6-1 ATS in their last 10 games as home favorites of at least three points. However, Arizona has failed to cover in three such instances this season.

Arizona is 5-5 ATS and 7-3 overall in its last 10 meetings against Colorado dating back to 2014.

Colorado, meanwhile, has covered in four consecutive games after failing to cover in the first two games of the season. The over has hit in the Buffaloes’ last three games.

There’s no way around it. If you’re a fan of the cooler season, this October has not been kind to you so far!

We briefly discussed a possible pattern change around the 18th in one of our posts earlier this month — and like clockwork, looking upstream is at least going to try to pay potential dividends.

Breaking down the large scale pattern: for now, we stay under the influence of high pressure, keeping things dry and warm for most of this week. By Friday and Saturday, we will start to see changes to our weather.

A strong push from the pacific jet stream will crash onshore of the northwest US, bringing cold air to most of the western states. Models are a bit back and forth on how much (if at all) that energy is able to spin up a low pressure system in the Rockies. If you’ve been weather model watching, you’ll know the global models (GFS, GEM, and EURO) have been printing out everything from heavy rain, heavy snow, our coldest air so far this season, to at times not much of anything at all, and everything in between that.

We’re still quite a ways out but we’re attempting to get a clearer image of what might play out later this week.

The most important aspect will be the placement of the potential trough.

The three images above are possible outcomes of this trough Friday into Saturday. The GFS (American), GEM (Canadian) and EURO (European) all show a big “bowling ball” type trough that spins itself out between Arizona, California and Nevada… never quite getting the worst of the system into our backyards in Colorado.

The data above is just one sample from each of those models.

We’ve talked about ensemble modeling before, which takes an average of a data set from these models. The latest from the Euro’s ensemble members shows the center of troughing further north towards the four corners. That indicates that there still is some background data skewing the average further north.

Regardless… the data are going to see big shifts this week as the models try to pin down an end product.

Now, let’s say the ensemble has a good idea on the track of this storm… what is it printing out in terms of snow/cold potential? Well, for a first potential snow, it’s not too shabby. At this range, this seems like a storm that would slow down mountain travel for sure… and potentially lead to a coating of snow for the front range. Some rough estimates on timing would put this storm in our area some time between Friday evening and through the day Saturday.

The GEFS is particularly bullish:

The Euro is less so, and perhaps a bit more in line with its deterministic as of today – showing about a 30 to 40% chance of 1″ of snow in Denver this weekend, which isn’t epic, but would count for the first snow event of the season if we could pull it off!

We shall see! Friday is Denver’s average first snowfall, so if we can pull it off it’d be right on time!

As for those low temperatures this weekend, depending on strength/placement of the low, frost/freeze potential will need to be monitored. Above is the “most likely* scenario as of now for coldest temperatures by Saturday morning. Plenty of 10s and 20s in the mountains, with 20s and 30s along the front range by Saturday morning.

So, quite a bit to figure out still, but at least the weather is trying to be interesting… We’ll continue to update throughout the week as this storm approaches the region! Subscribe to the e-mail list to get the next article as soon as it comes out!