Summary

A cold front will hit Colorado on Friday and most mountains should see a period of rain and snow during the first half of the day. Snow showers should continue to fall on Saturday and Sunday, especially in the northern and central mountains. The snow level should descend to around 9,000-10,000 feet, and most mountains should see at least a few inches of snow accumulation, perhaps up to 4-8 inches.

Details

The Aspen leaves are looking beautiful right now (Wednesday, September 21st). This webcam image from the top of Beaver Creek, looking northeast toward Vail, shows many Aspen groves in their full golden glory (though some groves are still green).

The big story for the rest of the week is a slow-moving storm that is cut off from the main west-to-east flow of weather. This storm will impact Colorado for many days.

Today on Wednesday, the storm is still well to our west, near California. Ahead of the storm, moisture from the south, associated with former Hurricane Paine, is producing mainly rain showers over southern Colorado. The snow level is likely around 13,000-14,000 feet.

On Thursday, we’ll be in between systems as the moisture from former Hurricane Paine will jet to our east while the slow, cut-off storm is still well to our west. We could experience a few showers, but the bigger story will be the gusty midday and afternoon winds (30-50mph gusts on exposed, high elevation terrain).

On Thursday night, the leading edge of the storm’s cold air will just be moving into central Utah, so we’ll still see warm temperatures here in Colorado.

On Friday morning and midday, a cold front will move through Colorado and will bring a line of rain showers, snow showers, and lightning and thunder. This line of storms should hit the western mountains the hardest and it may fall apart as it moves east. The snow level will drop through the day, likely getting down to 10,000 feet or a bit lower.

Here is the same temperature map as above, except for Friday night. Now our air in Colorado will be colder than average.

On Saturday, snow showers and clouds should cover the northern and central mountains. These showers should continue on Saturday night and Sunday, and there may be a little pop of rain and snow along the eastern mountains and foothills during this time, due to upslope flow (wind from the east).

Total precipitation from Wednesday through Sunday will be heaviest over Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.

Total snowfall will also be heaviest over those states, where the highest elevations could see 6-12 inches of snow. If this storm were to occur in mid winter with colder air, those states could have measured 1-3 FEET of snow. Can’t wait for this to happen!

Here in Colorado, the American GFS weather model only shows 2-4 inches for most mountains.

However, the American GFS weather model doesn’t pick up the details of our high mountains very well. The University of Utah makes a nifty adjustment to the model to account for the terrain, and when they do this, we see that some mountains have a 70% chance (or higher) of receiving 6+ inches of snow, with most mountains at least having a 50/50 chance of getting to the half-foot mark.

What does this storm mean for your weekend and beyond?

Dress warm, be ready for snow on the ground over 10,000 feet, and be ready for snowflakes to fall as low as about 8,500-9,500 feet during heavier showers.

If you’re conservative, you could put on the snow tires ahead of the storm, but next week’s weather should return to warm and dry conditions, so perhaps you want to wait a while for the snow tires to save some tread. If this is the case, just consider that there could be some snow on the ground on the higher mountain passes, so take it slow.

Shameless Plug - Consider upgrading to OpenSnow All-Access

If you’re looking for a way to support OpenSnow and get useful additional insight this winter, consider signing up for the All-Access Pass. Over 500 people have signed up in the last month, which is incredibly meaningful to our small team here at OpenSnow.

The All-Access pass gives you access to:

• 10-day forecasts

• Custom alerts to know about upcoming powder days

• Time-lapse webcams for tracking exactly when fresh snow has fallen

• Email delivery of the Colorado Daily Snow as soon as it’s published

All of this costs just $19 for one full year (365 days) and helps to support OpenSnow so that we can spend money and time to further improve our website and mobile apps.

I’d love to count you as an All-Access member!

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

Announcement - Heli Ski Event in Denver on October 6

Join me in Denver on Thursday, October 6th to learn more about heli-skiing with Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH).

I'll talk about my previous trips with CMH, they will show a premiere of their new short film, and apps and beer will be served!

This is always a fun event, so if you're interested in taking a heli ski trip this season or sometime soon, I hope you can make it! Please RSVP here: http://opsw.co/CMHDenverOct62016

Announcement - New Hiking Weather App!

OpenSummit has arrived!

The app provides hourly forecasts for each 14,000 foot peak in Colorado, including the chance of lightning, precipitation, summit temperature, and summit wind speed.

Also, and I find this super cool, the app shows recent Instagram pictures taken near each mountain. You can quickly see the trail conditions (is there snow?) by looking at these recent pictures.

This is version one of the app, and for now it is exclusively available as an app for iPhone. If you have an iPhone, and you like to hike 14ers, I would be thankful if you would download the app, play with it, and leave a (hopefully positive) review and send us lots of feedback to [email protected].

Download the app here or click the image below: http://opsw.co/OpenSummitapp