The current weather pattern on Thursday shows dry high pressure over Colorado (red colors) and stormy low pressure in the northwest (blue and green colors). The pink line shows the direction of the storm.

The storm over the Pacific Northwest will eventually make it to Colorado, but we’ll need to wait about two more days for that to happen. In the meantime, expect dry and warmer weather on Thursday and Friday with mountain high temperatures in the 30s along with high and mid-level clouds that will filter the sunshine.

Snow will begin late Friday night in the southern mountains and then spread across all mountains on Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and Sunday.

This is a complex storm because it will bring variable wind directions, first from the southwest, then from the west and northwest, then from the north. This will favor different mountains at different times.

By Sunday, the storm will be tracking across the southern border of Colorado, and this is when most mountains will see snow.

I am going to stick with my snow forecast range of 5-10 inches for most mountains. The University of Utah ensemble forecast, which I showed during the last two days, hasn’t changed much. If anything, the range has is now wider across the northern and central mountains, which means our confidence in snow amounts has decreased somewhat.

Below, the European model paints a general 5-10 inch range across most mountains areas. That feels reasonable for a 3-4 day forecast.

The bottom line is that most mountain ranges in Colorado will have powder on Sunday. In most areas, snow will continue to fall after the 5 am reports on Sunday morning, so don’t be too upset if the morning report is low as there should be more accumulation during the day.

We will likely see dry weather on Sunday night and Monday morning, then there could be snow showers later Monday into Tuesday with another round of snow later in the week. I have low confidence in the details, though all models show storminess hanging around the central and northern Rockies later next week, so our chances are good for additional snow.

Most models agree that we’ll see high pressure (dry weather) on or around the weekend of January 27-28, then storminess will return at the end of the month and through early February.

Stay tuned and 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, Arapahoe Basin, 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