Colorado Daily Snow

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

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 11 years ago October 22, 2012

What a nightmare of a forecast. Well, let's put that in perspective. We're talking about snow, and snow is the most awesome substance around, so that's not a nightmare. But trying to figure out what I should put in my forecast spreadsheet for the next five days and five night for all the Colorado resorts and backcountry areas is a real nightmare.

Meteorology is an incredibly useful science that's been getting better every year. I started talking about this Thursday's storm (Elvira) almost 10 days before it will arrive. Consider how amazing that is, especially when many other predictions made each day that have less skill (Who will win the presidency? Which team will with the game? What will the jobs numbers show when next week's report is released?).

Before getting into the possibilities, let's put some bounds around the storm.

The location of the deepest snow will be in the mountains along and north of I-70 and in the foothills west of the cities and east of the continental divide between about 6,000ft and 10,000ft.

The timing of the heaviest snow will be from 9pm Wednesday night through Thursday morning and again from Thursday afternoon through Thursday night.

If everything comes together perfectly, I think some areas in the foothills could see 5-10" and the mountains west of the divide could see 3-6". So this is not a massive storm, but it'll feel good and make everything white...even the urban areas on the plains which should see snow though it might not be more than a few inches.

This storm is still off the west coast if you can believe it, so we have a while before it gets on land and our robust network of weather stations and weather balloons can take measurements. Until that happens, the forecasts are still relatively uncertain.

Here's an example of this uncertainty. This is a temperature forecast for Leadville, CO from Monday morning through Thursday night.

Leadville temperature forecast

Temperature is on the vertical axis and time goes from left-to-right along the bottom. Each line represents a different model, 23 models in all. Notice that the forecast from Monday morning through Wednesday morning (10/24 at 12z) is rather certain with most models agreeing. The spread between the models is only a few degrees (all the lines are tightly bunched together). However, by Thursday midday (10/25 at 18z), the spread is between 17 degrees (brown line on the bottom) and 34 degrees (orange line on the top). That's a 17 degree spread if you're playing along at home. Holy moly! Now of course the "correct forecast" lies somewhere in the middle, likely represented by the dark black line as the average, showing about 23 degrees.

The big take away is that sometimes the models do great, and other times they're still trying to get their act together. No matter, we know snow is coming Wednesday night through Friday and the deepest accumulations will likely be east of the divide thanks to the upslope wind direction (from the east). However, the wind direction depends on the exact storm track which is still uncertain. If the storm stays just a tad further north and keeps its speed, the winds in the mountains west of the divide could be from the west or northwest and this would add another few inches to their totals.

Meanwhile, Tahoe is getting creamed!

JOEL GRATZ

PS - anyone partake in some backcountry skiing the over the last week or two? Let us know in the comments!

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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