Colorado Daily Snow
By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 5 years ago September 14, 2018
Dry and warm through Sep 18, then cooler with showers
Summary
Perfect September weather will stick around through the weekend and early next week. Then we might see a brief cool down with a few showers later next week. Still no significant rain/snow/cold in the foreseeable future.
Short Term Forecast
Typical Colorado weather in September is to wake up to clear blue skies, and that’s what we’ve seen for most of this week. Here is the view from the summit of Arapahoe Basin on Friday morning.
On the national map, active weather is confined to the southeast coast and areas to our west.
Over the southeast, Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday morning. While its winds weakened before landfall, storm surge and inland flooding are still big problems. It’s easy to pick out the hurricane on the national radar map.
To our west, strong winds and dry conditions a creating high fire danger. And in Friday morning’s visible satellite, we can see clear skies over Colorado with a plume of smoke over Utah emanating from a fire that’s about 70 miles south of Salt Lake City.
The Colorado Daily Snow is supposed to be about snow, and we finally have significant snow to talk about, just not in Colorado.
Over British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, there was an increase in snowpack during the past 24 hours, or in other words, that area went from no snow on the ground to some snow on the ground.
The webcam at Lake Louise (near Banff) shows the story with a couple of inches at the base of the mountain.
Extended Forecast
Looking ahead to the next 10 days, I still do not see any super interesting weather for us here in Colorado. And that’s good news for your outdoor adventures.
The 10-day precipitation forecast is lackluster:
And the 10-day snow forecast hints at a few flakes over Colorado in about one week:
Most models show the chance for a brief shot at cooler temperatures, along with a bit of rain or snow, later next week between Wednesday, September 19th and Saturday, September 22nd. I’ll keep an eye on this timeframe as the storm looks a little stronger now compared to a few days ago.
As I said before, none of the long-range models show a chance for widespread snow in Colorado until sometime in October, so it’s likely going to be at least another few weeks before significant snow blankets our mountains.
Thanks for reading … next update on Monday, September 17!
JOEL GRATZ
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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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