Summary:

• Northern mountains could see clouds/flurries Wed, Sat, and next Mon/Tue
• Otherwise dry and mostly sunny for next ~10 days
• Hoping for a pattern change later this month

 

Details:

On Monday another 1-3 inches of snow fell for many mountains around Aspen, I-70, and north to Steamboat. This brought storm totals up to about 3-5 inches for these areas, with 5-8 inches around Aspen and likely double digits in the higher elevations of the San Juans in southern Colorado.

From today, Tuesday, through at least the middle of next week, the storm track will be to our north and east. This means that the western US will generally be dry while the eastern US experiences frequent storms with decent cold air (considering it's early November). This storm track also favors snow in British Columbia in western Canada.

There are two ways that Colorado can get snow with this storm track. The first way is when storms clip northern Colorado as they head to our east (dark blue line). The second way is when storms from the Pacific Ocean "undercut" the warm and dry ridge of high pressure over the west coast and meander into the southwestern United States (light blue line).

Both of these types of storms usually do not bring significant snow to Colorado. Over the next 10 days, we'll likely see three storms clipping northern Colorado on Wednesday, Saturday night, and next Monday or Tuesday. During each of these times look for more clouds along and north of I-70 and an increase in wind speeds, but likely only flurries over the mountains with perhaps flurries or snow showers over the eastern foothills and plains.

Sometime around the middle of November, some models hint that we'll see a storm undercut the ridge, but this is 10+ days away, so there's no sense in talking about specifics at this point.

I'm keeping an eye on the models that forecast 2+ weeks into the future to see if there's any hint of a pattern change. Right now we'll just have to be patient and enjoy the machine-made snow that we have.

JOEL GRATZ

Event Announcements:

1. I am giving a talk in Nederland this Thursday, November 6th at 6pm at Tin Shed sports. Stop by, it's free:-) More details.