Tuesday morning’s radar animation shows the storm track to our north and the big storm over the northeast.

This weather pattern will deliver dry weather to Colorado, and the main forecast challenge will be clouds.

With dry and warmer weather, we expect the snow surface to be firm in the morning and then transition into softer, spring conditions by mid-to-late morning as the sun warms the snow surface.

When we have high and mid-level clouds that filter the sunshine, this reduces the amount of warming at the surface and the snow surface can fail to soften.

This is what happened at many mountains on Monday, as enough high clouds covered the sky that it prevented the snow surface from softening, especially over the northern and central mountains.

The water vapor satellite image on Tuesday morning shows moisture over most Colorado mountains with dry air and no clouds (black colors) just to our west.

I don’t find model forecasts of clouds to be super reliable, especially mid-and-high level clouds. That said, there are enough clouds on the actual satellite image and in the forecast for Tuesday that I am concerned that we might not have enough direct sunshine to soften the snow surface. If, however, there are some breaks in the clouds that allow the sun to shine for just a few hours in the late morning, then the snow will soften. It’s a tricky forecast.

I am more confident that Wednesday will be a fully sunny day as the ridge of high pressure will be directly over Colorado.

Then on Thursday, Friday, and the upcoming weekend, we may see more mid-and-high level clouds move in from the west, so despite the warm forecasted temperatures in the 40s, some areas of snow may not soften if the clouds are thick enough. We’ll see. It's rare that I focus so much time on forecasting non-precipitation producing clouds, but that's the difference between soft snow and harder snow.

There is now good agreement that the next chance for significant snow will occur with a storm on March 22-23.

Then the longer-range models show that storms should move close to or over Colorado every few days through the end of March and the beginning of April. Powder will return … we just need to be patient for about one more week:-)

Thanks for reading!

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