Colorado Daily Snow

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By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 5 years ago December 9, 2018

Soft-on-Soft on Sunday in the northern mountains

Summary

A final wave of light snow hit the northern mountains on Saturday night with 1-3 inches reported on Sunday morning. The soft conditions will continue! The next significant storm should arrive Wednesday night with 3-8 inches for most mountains. Then I am unsure about next weekend’s weather, while there is a good chance for additional storms during the week of December 17-21.

Short Term Forecast

Recap of Saturday and Saturday night

On Saturday we saw times fo sunshine and times of low clouds, along with a few flurries and snow showers.

Then on Saturday night and now early on Sunday morning, a final piece of energy clipped northern Colorado on its way to the east, and this delivered another round of fresh snow for the northern mountains. This means that some mountains have reported new snow on 10 of the past 11 days, which is a remarkable stretch!

Below are the snow reports from Saturday morning to Sunday morning. Most of this snow fell on Saturday night into Sunday morning, so it’ll be fresh on Sunday first chair.

Breckenridge: 3”
Steamboat: 3”
Winter Park: 3”
Copper: 2”
Beaver Creek: 1”
Eldora: 1"
Keystone: 1”
Loveland: 1”
Snowmass: 1”
Vail: 1”

The snow stake at Breckenridge shows the fresh 3 inches of snow on Sunday morning. The look of the accumulation on the stake shows me that the snow should be fluffy and light.

Sunday

You’ll find fresh snow in the northern mountains in the morning (see above) and low clouds could hang on for some of the day in the northern and central mountains.

Also, in the wake of the last piece of energy moving through the state, temperatures will be cool, only in the teens and low 20s in the northern and central mountains. This is much cooler than most models showed in their forecast just a few days ago.

Chasing powder

In addition to the snow here in Colorado, the other action is in the southeast. Yes, the mountains of western North Carolina and Virginia are in for a foot of snow!

If you want to keep tabs on the best locations to chase powder around the US and Canada, check out the Chase Daily Snow forecast with Powderchaser Steve. He will literally drive through the entire night to chase powder, and his write ups will help you get to the right spot as well. More here: https://opensnow.com/dailysnow/chase

Monday

We should see mostly sunny skies across all of Colorado for the first time in about 10-11 days. Enjoy the sun and the warmer temperatures.

The weather pattern forecast shows a brief ridge of high pressure (black lines bulging northward) over Colorado.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Both Tuesday and Wednesday could be ‘tweener’ days. We might see some sunshine, there could also be some clouds around, and there could be a few showers as weak energy moves over Colorado. If the models begin to agree about the timing of the precipitation, I’ll let you know.

Strong storm Wednesday night, powder Thursday morning

We are still expecting a strong storm starting later on Wednesday and ending on Thursday morning.

The pros of this storm are that it will have strong energy and a wind from the northwest behind the cold front should bring snow to most mountains.

The cons of this storm are that it will move through quickly (limiting accumulations), it’ll lack moisture, and because we will have seen dry weather or just very light snow in the days leading up to the storm, conditions on Thursday morning will likely be ‘Soft on Firm’ with new snow on top of a harder base.

Looking at all models, right now I’d say the consensus forecast would be for 3-8 inches of snow on Thursday morning. Again, since the storm will be moving fast and lacking moisture, I’ll keep my expectations in check, but a midweek powder day is always a bonus if you can enjoy it, so keep your eye on the powder potential of Thursday morning.

Below is the weather pattern forecast for Wednesday night into Thursday morning.

Extended Forecast

Next weekend

I have no idea what will happen. Some models keep it dry, others show the chance for light or moderate snow. We just do not know.

Week of December 17-21

Chances are increasing that we’ll see one or two storms during this week. There is still no consensus about exactly when we’ll see the storms, but the multi-model ensemble forecasts do hint at multiple systems (see below).

The text below is copied from yesterday…


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Here are articles that we wrote that compare the old site and the new site:

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If you fall into the camp of hating the new website or app, my request is for you to take a few days or a week to play with the new products, and then send me feedback ([email protected]) about what you’d like to see changed. And remember, the previous website was built over 5 years of tweaking and improving, and the new website and app will continue to improve over the coming months and years.


Thanks for reading!

My next update will be on Monday, December 10.

JOEL GRATZ

Announcements

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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