Snow began to fall on Sunday night at midnight and it has accumulated at more than 1 inch per hour for some areas through Monday morning at 7 am.

Here are the snow reports on Christmas morning. The first number is the total as of 5 am and the second number is the additional snow that fell after the report between 5 am - 7 am. If there is no second number, it’s because I cannot verify how much fell after the 5 am report.

Sunday midnight to Monday 5 am / Monday 5 am - 7 am

Crested Butte - 7” / 1”
Eldora - 7"
Steamboat - 7”
Winter Park - 7” / 5”
Arapahoe Basin - 6”
Keystone - 6” / 5”
Breckenridge - 5” / 5”
Copper - 5” / 5”
Monarch - 5”
Cooper - 4”
Granby - 4”
Loveland - 4”
Sunlight - 4”
Vail - 4” / 1”
Aspen/Snowmass - 2-3” / 1”
Beaver Creek - 3” / 2”
Purgatory - 3”
Wolf Creek - 2”
Telluride - 1”

The deepest totals so far are about 10-12 inches at Winter Park, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Copper (other northern mountains, like Arapahoe Basin, Loveland, and Steamboat are also likely deep but I can't tell how much snow fell after 5 am). Here is the snow stake at Winter Park at 7 am on Monday morning.

By the time lifts open on Christmas morning, most central and northern mountains will see an additional 1-3 inches, so Christmas morning will qualify as a full-on powder day in many areas. It’s rather rare for locations in the northern mountains to receive 10+ inches of snow overnight and have it all be fresh in the morning, so go get it!

Also, as expected, the south-central mountains around Crested Butte and Monarch are doing well as the wind direction from the west-southwest favors these areas.

The most intense snow will likely taper off between 10 am and noon, so get out and ski it as soon as possible!

The furthest northern mountains around Steamboat, Cameron Pass, Rocky Mountain National Park, Eldora, Berthoud Pass, Winter Park, and Loveland may see light-but-still accumulating snow continue through Monday evening into Tuesday morning.

Unfortunately, it looks like the storm track will retreat about 200 miles to the north for the rest of the week.

While my forecast is for dry weather through the week and weekend, it would only take a small southward shift in any one of the multiple storms that will pass to our north to bring snow to Colorado.

I am not optimistic about big totals, but with a bit of luck perhaps the northern mountains will see light snow Wednesday night and again on Saturday night.

Beyond about 3 days out, I don’t have confidence that the models will know the exact track of each storm, so I’ll keep looking at the data and will update you if and when I see any changes.

Looking further out, there is still not much consensus in the data, but it does look like there’s a trend toward stormier weather returning sometime between about January 3-6th.

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

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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