Colorado Daily Snow

Heads up, there may be fresher snow! Read the latest Colorado Daily Snow

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 5 years ago August 22, 2018

Healthy rain

Update

I am going to start posting the Colorado Daily Snow a few times a week.

We are still about two months from any lifts starting to spin, but it’ll be fun to start looking at weather systems and picking out anything noteworthy that’s heading toward Colorado.

Rain!

The moisture surge on Tuesday night came through as expected. Rain amounts across the central-mountains were healthy, in the 0.5 - 1.0 inch range (see the blue colors in the map below).

I do NOT see another surge of moisture in the next 5+ days. Expect additional showers now and again, but no widespread heavy rain like Tuesday night.

Smoke!

The smoke forecast for Wednesday has Colorado largely in the clear.

The reprieve will be short lived as the smoke will likely return later on Thursday.

The HRRR smoke model only forecasts out to 36 hours, so at the time of this writing, I only can see the forecast through Thursday morning.

By Thursday morning, the smoke is knocking on Colorado’s western border.

The images above show “Vertically Integrated Smoke”, which means smoke from the ground up through the atmosphere.

The image below shows the “Near-Surface Smoke” forecast for Thursday morning. Compare the image below to the one above (they are at the same time) and notice that while total smoke in the atmosphere is heading into Colorado (above), there is not much near the ground (below).

Thus the sky may turn hazy on Thursday but I hope that the near-surface smoke doesn’t move into Colorado as quickly and with as much intensity as the smoke that's drifting in with winds higher up in the atmosphere.

Snow!

A cool storm will move through western Canada and the northern Rockies of the US early next week. High-elevation snow is popping up in the forecast for this area. This is fun to see and not unusual for this time of year.

OpenSummit

If you want detailed weather forecasts for your summer and fall hiking, biking, and climbing adventures, please download the newest update to our OpenSummit app.

Download OpenSummit (iPhone only)

We just released an update that increases the number of mountains from Colorado 14ers to about 1,000 of the highest and/or notable summits and hiking areas across the country.

People often me what I do in the summer. In addition to working on features for OpenSnow for next season, we spend considerable time improving and expanding OpenSummit. Thanks for checking it out!

Thanks for reading … next update on Friday, August 24.

JOEL GRATZ

Announcements

Vail Prize Raffle

A friend of mine helps to run the Vail Symposium, which hosts community events with expert speakers throughout the year. Their annual fundraising raffle is going on now and the grand prize package is a seven-day luxury stay in Vail. I thought this might be an enticing prize for the OpenSnow community in Colorado. Here’s the link for more information: https://go.rallyup.com/vailvacation

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

About Our Forecaster

Joel Gratz

Founding Meteorologist

Joel Gratz is the Founding Meteorologist of OpenSnow and has lived in Boulder, Colorado since 2003. Before moving to Colorado, he spent his childhood as a (not very fast) ski racer in eastern Pennsylvania.

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