Colorado Daily Snow

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

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 7 years ago October 27, 2016

Next snow on Halloween?

Summary

The beautiful fall weather will continue through the weekend, and then a brief shot of cold air and snow could arrive on Monday the 31st, just in time for Halloween. Another storm my swing near Colorado later next week.

Short-Term Forecast

Waiting … waiting … waiting for cold air and snow. Will it arrive soon? Unfortunately not. The next few days will be warm, sunny, and dry.

The weather pattern later this week looks similar to the last few weeks. A large area of storminess is anchored just west of the west coast while a ridge of high pressure will stay over Colorado.

As a piece of the west-coast storminess heads east, western and northern Colorado may see a few showers late Friday into Saturday, but they won’t amount to much.

Finally, later on Sunday into Monday (Halloween), a more significant piece of the west-coast storminess will head east, and this one should hit northern Colorado with enough punch to produce at least a quick shot of snow (a few inches?) and cool temperatures for 24-48 hours. The European model just jumped on board with the GFS, forecasting the Monday storm to stay far enough south to affect Colorado. Let’s hope the models stick with this forecast!

Beyond the Monday storm, we should return to dry weather for a few days, and then there’s a chance that another piece of the west-coast storminess heads east toward the Rockies near the end of the week (November 3rd-ish). We’ll see if that transpires … it’s over one week away, so no promises:-)

Extended Outlook

Don’t fret when you see the graphic below.

Most 10-15 day forecasts I’ve seen show most of the storminess staying well off the west coast with a ridge over the Rockies. Of course 10-15 day forecasts aren’t that accurate, but still, this forecast doesn’t inspire confidence that we’ll see cold weather during the first 10 days of November.

At some point, the storminess over the Pacific should shift east, and when it does, we should enjoy a stretch of snowy and cold weather. But we’ll likely have to wait until at least after the first week of November for that to occur here in Colorado.

Not far to our west and north, in Tahoe, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and western Canada, the snowpack is growing and in good shape for the early season.

Patience…we’ll get there!

Snowmaking

Warm temperatures mean not a lot of great snowmaking time for the next week. I wish I had better news. Hopefully the storm around Halloween will cool things off a bit.

Thanks for reading, even when it’s warm outside!

JOEL GRATZ

Heli-ski event at Arc’teryx in Cherry Creek on Wednesday, November 2nd

Join myself and Canadian Mountain Holidays Heli Skiing at the Arc’teryx store to enjoy a few beverages, learn more about CMH’s lodges and trips from one of their guides, watch a few short films, and hear more about my trips to CMH and if I think it’ll ever stop being super warm in November:-) The event is from 6pm-8pm on Wednesday, November 2nd, at the Arc’teryx store at 250 Columbine St. Please RSVP so we can get an accurate count for seating and beverages: http://opsw.co/cmharcteryx

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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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