Colorado Daily Snow

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

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 11 years ago December 13, 2012

The best news I can write is that a LOT of snow will fall in the southern San Juans during the day on Friday. Total accumulations for Wolf Creek should be around 12-18 inches from early Friday morning through Friday evening. Durango and Silverton will also see good snow with perhaps up to a foot falling. Great news!

Other mountains to the north of the San Juans will see clouds and off-and-on light snow on Friday, but a wind from the southwest is not good for heavy snow. However, once the wind switches around to blow from a more westerly direction on Friday late afternoon and evening, I think most areas of the state will see good snow on Friday night with 2-4 or 3-5 inches falling.

A few weak pieces of storm energy (vorticity) will move near or over Colorado on Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday, and this will keep light snow going for most of the time. It's almost impossible to say more than "most areas should could see an inch or two of snow" during each period from Saturday through Sunday. I'm not expecting large accumulations during this time, but off-and-on snowfall will add up to a few more inches by Sunday afternon.

The Sunday night storm now looks to stay just a touch too far north to bring good snow to Colorado, but we will still see some snow. A few more inches could fall Sunday night, mostly for the northern two-thirds of the state. I wouldn't be surprised to see newer computer models reverse their trend and bring the storm a little further south than current projections, but I'll be conservative for now and update the forecast tomorrow if this happens.

There should be a pretty good storm next Tuesday into Wednesday, though the European model is much less optimistic about this storm compared to the American GFS, and the Euro is more often correct at lead times of 5-7 days. Let's hope for the best, but again I want to be realistic and then be pleasantly surprised if things coming together just right.

Looking beyond next week into the following weekend, the American model is showing a storm every few days while the European model is pushing the storminess over the west coast and reverting back toward a drier pattern for Colorado. This is a 10-15 day forecast, so I don't put any weight in the details, but I hope we don't revert too soon. While the European model is often more accurate, I've also seen models be too quick to make large scale changes to the pattern, so let's hope for the best in the long term and enjoy this weekend's snow!

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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