Colorado Daily Snow

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

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 9 years ago September 17, 2014

Summary:

Wednesday and Thursday will be mundane with afternoon clouds and a shower over the mountains. Friday brings a better chance of rain, but not a lot of rain. Saturday will be the drier day of the weekend (still a shower possible), while Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday look cloudy and potentially pretty wet. The second half of next week should be dry.

Details:

Tuesday was a nice day with a few afternoon showers over the mountains, with the most showers over the San Juans.

Wednesday is dawning with dry conditions across the state and some high cirrus clouds spreading up from the south. It was a beautiful sunrise from the Mt Evans webcam with the cirrus clouds visible at the top of the image.

colorado weather

Looking at the current weather across the west, there are two obvious features on the infrared satellite image (infrared sensors on the satellite measure temperature and therefore can "see" the colder clouds above the ground even though it's dark during the overnight hours).

The first feature is over Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. This is what's left of Hurricane Odile. Heavy rain of more than 3 inches is falling over AZ and NM, but the main effect on Colorado will be high clouds over southern Colorado, afternoon mountain showers over the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains, and a burst of heavy rain for extreme southeast Colorado on Friday as the decaying center of Odile passes by. Most of Colorado will not see heavy precipitation from Odile.

colorado weather

Wednesday morning satellite image. Source: Weathertap.com

The second feature is the swirling mass of clouds west of California. This storm will cut-off from the main west-to-east flow of weather and it will hang out over California for a few days before finally moving east toward Colorado early next week.

What does this mean for our weather?

Wednesday and Thursday will be mostly dry with the best chance for showers over the southern mountains.

Friday will still be mostly dry, but there's a better chance for afternoon showers over most mountains. This is because a bit more moisture will be over the state.

Saturday will be the nicer day of the weekend as we'll be in between the two storms I mentioned above. I still can't rule out the chance of a shower over the mountains and some low clouds over the front range and plains east of the divide, but if you're heading to the hills to check out the early fall color, Saturday looks better than Sunday.

By Sunday, the cut-off storm over California will move toward us, so look for lots of showers, clouds, and cooler weather on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday as this storm moves along at a turtle's pace.

colorado weather

Respectable rainfall totals could fall on much of Colorado on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday according to the American GFS weather model's forecast. Source: Weatherbell.com

Yesterday I talked about how the European model showed the cut-off storm moving more slowly than the American GFS model, and how this would lead to a pretty nice weekend. That was half correct. The storm IS going to move more slowly than the original GFS forecast, which is pretty standard as the GFS is usually too fast with these storms. And the European was pretty much correct, delaying the arrival of the storm until early next week. However, the storm is going to be potent enough to pull moisture into Colorado well ahead of its arrival, and this is why Sunday is now looking like not the greatest day. In short, the European model was about right with the timing of the storm, but a bit off with its strength.

By next Wednesday the cut-off storm should move east of Colorado with improving weather. Then next Thursday and Friday should be sunny with near normal temperatures.

These cut-off storms are really a pain to forecast ... they're like a drunk person stumbling around at 2am with no direction and you can't tell where they're going to go next. I'm relatively confident in the forecast I shared above since more of the models are coming into a agreement AND the models match my previous experience of cut-off storms. But I'm not as confident as I would normally be about a 4-5 day forecast, so stay tuned.

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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