Summary

It snowed on Wednesday night and most central and northern mountains received 2-4 inches - looks like winter out there! Our next storm is possible around mid-October.

Details

The snow that we talked about for Wednesday night came to fruition! Snow fell heavily on the northern and central mountains between about midnight and 6am.

Here is a photo tour, roughly from north-to-south. Since no resorts are officially reporting snow, the snow amounts I show on the photos are my estimate based on the image and nearby SNOTEL sites.

Thursday will be chilly and partly cloudy with snow flurries and showers, but accumulations will be light to none. Most of the action from this storm is in the past.

Looking ahead, we’ll see warming temperatures on Friday through the weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday should be dry for most mountains with just a small chance of a rain shower for the southern mountains on Sunday.

Next week should be rather mundane with warm-ish temperatures and a chance for a few showers each day. Overall a decent week if you want to recreate outside, but not ideal for snow making as temperatures will be on the warm side.

The outlook through the end of next week is for most of the country to be warm and for most of the precipitation to stay over the Pacific Northwest.

Our next chance for cooler weather and snow here in Colorado might come from a fast-moving storm (or two) around the middle of October.

Stay tuned for updates as I’ll keep an eye on the temperature forecast (which impacts snowmaking) and also will keep track of our next potential storm.

Also, thanks for the 60 people that packed into the Powder7 ski shop (http://opsw.co/powder7) in Golden on Wednesday night. We had a great time talking about weather for about an hour, or perhaps the smiles were due not to my talk about weather but rather the adult beverages. Whatever the case, I love getting out from behind my computer and meeting all of us skiers and riders in real life, and I hope to have more talks coming up!

And now, it’s announcement time!

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New Hiking Weather App!

Last week, we launched “OpenSummit”, a new iPhone app that provides hourly forecasts for each 14,000 foot peak in Colorado, including the chance of lightning, precipitation, summit temperature, and summit wind speed. Download the app here: http://opsw.co/OpenSummitapp

Did you know that you can get more from OpenSnow?

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.

This 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!

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Yay for snow, let’s hope for cooler weather than the forecast, and check back soon to see if we can eek out a storm later next week!

JOEL GRATZ