The current weather pattern is bringing waves of snow to the northern mountains and the tough part is timing each wave. We saw one on Wednesday night into Thursday. And additional snow has accumulated with the next wave that moved through on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Below are the snow totals from the storm. The first number is the snow that fell on Friday night, and the second number is the total snowfall since Wednesday night. These are based on official resort measurements. It’s likely that an inch or two has fallen between the Saturday 5 am report and when I’m writing this now on Saturday at 8 am.

Loveland - 1” / 6”
Arapahoe Basin - 1” / 5”
Steamboat - 3” / 4.5”
Winter Park - 3” / 4.5”
Keystone - 1” / 3”
Breckenridge - 1” / 2”
Cooper - 1” / 2”
Copper - 1” / 2”
Eldora - 0” / 2”
Granby - 2” / 2”

These are not big totals, but they will add up to respectable totals during the course of this storm cycle.

To figure this out when we'll see snow during this storm cycle, I like to look at the high-resolution NAM-WRF 3km model. This model usually over forecasts the amount of snow, but does a pretty good job with the timing of the snow.

A wave on Saturday morning.

A wave on Saturday evening.

Looks dry-ish on Sunday with just light accumulations in far northern Colorado.

A strong wave brings significant snow to Steamboat, Granby, and Cameron Pass on Monday afternoon.

That snow then moves south to the I-70 mountains by Monday evening.

The model only forecasts out to 60 hours, but based on other models, the snow should move south and hit all mountains on Monday night into Tuesday morning.

The best chance for deeper totals will be on Tuesday morning. In the northern mountains, Tuesday morning should be a powder day with 6+ inches of snow. The central and southern mountains should see at least a few inches as well.

Following the Monday night and Tuesday morning storm, we could see snow showers through the day on Tuesday into Tuesday night, so Wednesday could be soft as well.

Following the midweek storm, Wednesday and Thursday should be dry.

Most models now indicate that the storm track may edge just a hair to the west, which would allow storms to bring snow to Colorado through the middle of February. We could see some snow next Friday and Saturday (February 9-10) and perhaps again at some point the following week. I have very low confidence in the timing and intensity of these storms, but at least there is the potential for action through mid-month, which is an improvement to the forecasts from the last few days.

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Granby, Beaver Creek, Vail, Ski Cooper, Copper, Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, Abasin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, Eldora, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Along the Divide
Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass

East of the Divide
Eldora, Echo, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Central Mountains
Aspen, Sunlight, Monarch, Crested Butte, Irwin, Powderhorn

Southern Mountains
Telluride, Silverton – north side of the southern mountains | Purgatory, Wolf Creek – south side of the southern mountains