On Monday snow showers continued over the southern and south-central mountains with another 1-4 inches of accumulation. Then the southern storm finally began to move east on Monday night and clear skies prevailed.

Here is a webcam snapshot of Telluride under the nearly full moon.

Now on Tuesday morning, the entire state is waking up to clear, bluebird skies. In Steamboat, low clouds are hanging on, so you’ll be able to ski above the clouds this morning.

The weather on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday will be gorgeous. Sunny skies, light winds, and temperatures climbing into the 30s and low 40s during the afternoon. It’ll feel like an early taste of spring.

All of the action is in the medium-to-long range forecast, so let’s go there…

While the models have done a good job forecasting an active pattern between February 18-28th, they are not yet able to resolve the details of this pattern.

Here is what I think we know...

It appears that this Friday and Saturday will be warm, partly cloudy, and there will be a few snow showers roaming around.

Then we could see cooler temperatures and steadier snow between about Sunday and Tuesday, with a break later Tuesday and Wednesday.

After that, we could once again see steadier snow later next week and weekend, between about February 23-26.

The longer-range models do show storm-after-storm moving inland from the Pacific Ocean and bringing moisture to Colorado, but as usual, it is the details of each storm that will dictate whether we see heavy snow or light snow.

Most models continue to favor the southern and south-central mountains in the upcoming pattern, but it’s too soon to have much confidence in this.

The American GFS ensemble model, an average of multiple versions of the GFS model, shows a couple inches of precipitation between February 18-28, which translates into a couple feet of snow.

This active pattern is good news, and I hope that we’ll be able to figure out the details, at least of the first part of this pattern, during the next few days.

Thanks for reading and happy Valentine’s Day!

JOEL GRATZ

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Granby, Beaver Creek, Vail, Ski Cooper, Copper, Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, Abasin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, Eldora, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Along the Divide
Loveland, Abasin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass

East of the Divide
Eldora, Echo, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Central Mountains
Aspen, Sunlight, Monarch, Crested Butte, Irwin, Powderhorn

Southern Mountains
Telluride, Silverton – north side of the southern mountains | Purgatory, Wolf Creek – south side of the southern mountains