Colorado Daily Snow

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By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 6 years ago September 4, 2017

Smokey east of the mountains and cold front arrives on Tuesday. No snow yet.

Update

My son is now just over one week old, and he happens to like sleeping, so Lauren and I are slowly getting into a routine and I am back to looking at the weather. Thanks for all of your good wishes in the comments of my previous post and via email!

Smoke

If you are in the mountains of Colorado, you likely have not noticed much smoke during the labor day weekend.

However, if you are east of the mountains, you have likely seen the haze.

The smoke is from wildfires in the northwestern US and Canada. It's even thicker to our north, and the flow from the northwest is bringing the smoke to eastern Colorado.

The satellite image above is from late morning on Monday. The smoke shows up as the brown, milky color flowing from the upper left to lower right. You can see that the mountains of Colorado are relatively smoke-free while eastern Colorado is smokey.

The webcam at the top of Pikes Peak shows the difference between eastern and western Colorado.

The view to the east is very smokey.

While the view to the west is a bit clearer.

Cold front arrives on Tuesday

Eastern Colorado will continue to be the focus of the action as a cold front drops temperatures early Tuesday morning.

Temperatures on Tuesday morning will be 5-15 degrees below average while the mountains of Colorado will see average to above average temperatures.

Most cold fronts that hit the eastern part of Colorado push low clouds up against the mountains and this time will not be an exception. We'll likely see low cloud cover near and east of the mountains.

Since the cold front will be coming from the north, which is also where the smoke is coming from, it's possible that the areas east of the mountains will continue to see some smoke, though the mixing of the atmosphere (due to the front) might also reduce the smoke concentration. I don't know.

While temperatures in eastern Colorado on Tuesday will be chilly with a freezing level around 13,000 feet, I don't think we'll see much precipitation with the front, so snow chances are minimal.

Looking ahead

I do not see any significant snow chances through mid-September.

It does appear that we'll have some moisture lingering around the state through mid month, so there will be chances for showers. September is typically very dry in Colorado, but we might see a bit more precipitation than normal over the next week or two.

Forecast for the upcoming season

I just wrote two longer articles about 3-6 month forecasts.

First, this article shows that last season's forecasts were mostly incorrect:

http://opensnow.com/news/post/long-range-weather-forecasts-stink-a-look-back-at-the-winter-snow-forecast-for-2016-2017

And for fun, here is NOAA's forecast for the upcoming season. Remember, based on the accuracy of seasonal forecasts in general, we shouldn't rely on these long-term predictions.

http://opensnow.com/news/post/noaa-s-2017-2018-winter-forecast

Next update

I'll post again on Wednesday and we'll see if any of the 7-14 day models show a hint of snow.

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

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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