Colorado Daily Snow

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

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 9 years ago November 16, 2014

Wow

Summary:

  • The last week has been incredible. 20-40+ inches for most areas!
  • Snow continues heavily Saturday night for southern Colorado
  • Dry Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
  • Light snow possible for northern Colorado Thursday
  • Pretty active pattern is likely for next Sunday through Thanksgiving week

 

Details:

I'm writing this update on Saturday night so that I can go skiing on Sunday morning. I hope you're going skiing on Sunday morning as well! Snow will stop falling by late Saturday night into very early Sunday morning, so get out and enjoy the sunny skies and very cool temperatures (near 0F in the morning).

Since Monday, most areas of the state measured at least 18 inches, and some locations along I-70 will top out over 40 inches. To put that in perspective, 40ish inches is close-ish to the monthly average snowfall along I-70. So there you go: one month's worth of snowfall in 6 days. I can't remember another time in the last 11 years (since I moved to Colorado) that the I-70 areas measured double-digit snowfalls in 3 out of 4 days. To make that happen, it takes a special weather situation where a front stalls out, stretching from west-to-east. This happened multiple times over the past week.

The radar image below is from Saturday evening around 5pm. It shows heavy snow along the stalled front, stretching from west-to-east, over central Colorado. You can see a break in the snow over the middle of the state, but this is only because the radar beam is blocked by the mountains. In reality it was dumping snow in this area.

colorado snow

Once you catch your breath from this awesome week, permit yourself to be guardedly excited at the mid and long-range forecast.

After dry days on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and weak storm will bring snow to the northern half of Colorado on Thursday. This storm has been weakened but the ridge of high pressure that is (still) keeping California dry, so I don't expect our Thursday system to be significant. But after the last week, I'm ready to be surprised.

Then Friday and Saturday should be dry, with another storm moving through next Sunday-ish. In fact, a few storms might come toward Colorado during the week of Thanksgiving, so there will be plenty to talk about. The longer-range models do tend to break these systems apart as they move from the Pacific Ocean into the western US, so I don't have high confidence about their path and strength. But I love that the long-range outlook has possible storms and not dry weather. That's all you can hope for 7+ days out:-)

JOEL GRATZ

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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