Summary:

Snow will increase Saturday afternoon, fall heavily Saturday night, and taper off by midday Sunday. The deepest accumulations will be in the central and southern mountains with lighter accumulations in the northern mountains. Sunday morning will be the best powder day across the state for at least the next 10 days.

Details:

The very cold air over Colorado will warm up a bit on Saturday. This will be nice for your skin, and will also put the atmosphere into a perfect state to efficiently create snow on Saturday night. The temperatures over the last two days were actually too cold to create big dendrite snowflakes, hence the crystals in the air with little accumulation.

Snow will begin to fall on Saturday with a few inches accumulating by afternoon in the southern mountains and the south-central mountains around Irwin, Crested Butte, and Monarch. Further north along I-70, the wind from the southwest or west-southwest will keep snow accumulations light. All of the snow that falls on Saturday will be a bonus as the best energy from the storm will not arrive until Saturday night.

By Saturday night, the main part of the storm will be over Colorado with heavy snow for areas from Aspen south to Crested Butte and the southern mountains. This storm won't have a lot of moisture, but the atmosphere will efficiently turn this moisture into snow with temperatures at mountaintop around 5-10 degrees.

On Sunday morning, the snow will taper off in the central and southern mountains but increase along I-70 as the wind switches to blow from the northwest. This heavier snow will likely last through late morning or midday, but it's possible that on-and-off snow squalls persist for northern Colorado through Sunday afternoon and Sunday night.

Accumulations will be about 4-7 inches for the northern mountains, about 6-10+ inches for the central mountains, 8-12+ inches for the southern mountains. Detailed forecasts are here: http://opsw.co/CO1-5

Temperatures will bottom out on Monday morning, then begin to warm up next week. Unfortunately, the storm that I was hoping would materialize for next Friday is likely going to miss us, so it appears our weather will be dry for at least the next 10 days. Both the American and European models are showing a return toward a stormier pattern in about 10-14 days, so let's hope that transpires and our snowpack stays on the right side of average.

JOEL GRATZ