The weather pattern on Friday, August 31st shows that moisture is streaming into Colorado from Hurricane Norman in the eastern Pacific Ocean!

This isn’t unheard of or especially notable, but it is fun to think that a storm located 1,000 miles from Colorado can influence our weather.

As the moisture increases across Colorado (the moisture source is partially from Hurricane Norman and mostly from Mexico), we’ll see increasing chances for midday, afternoon, and evening rain across most of the mountains.

While the last few days have been mostly dry, expect showers on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and through much of next week. This should NOT ruin your holiday plans, but be prepared for raindrops at some point during each day.

The total precipitation forecast for the next week shows that Colorado is on the western edge of the heaviest rainfall.

Zooming in, the average of many models shows a chance for about 1.0 to 1.5 inches of rain in the favored areas of the southern and central mountains. There should be less precipitation the further north and west you go.

During any time of rain over the next week, the highest elevations over about 13,000 feet could see snowflakes.

If there is an especially intense period of rain that occurs during the cooler hours after the sun goes down, perhaps the snow level will get down to 12,000 feet. Yay for (the chance of a little bit of) snow!

OpenSummit

If you want detailed weather forecasts for your 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.

Thanks for checking out OpenSummit!

And thanks for reading … next update on Monday, September 3.

JOEL GRATZ

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