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By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 12 years ago March 30, 2012

The three-day forecast is where it's at

The last few blog posts showed a contrast of different computer model forecasts for the Sunday night storm in Colorado. The European was the most consistent and therefore believable.

Well, today we have evidence as to why I generally wait until the three-day forecast before feeling like I've "nailed" the storm. While there were big differences between the models with the six day, five day, and four day forecasts, now looking at the three-day forecast -- all the models basically agree. Again, the blue line is the the leading edge of the main part of the storm.



Now, compare these three-day forecasts to six-day forecasts, and you can easily see how the models were all in disagreement  six days out and then "magically" came into agreement when the storm was 72 hours (three days) away.



When planning your life around storms and snow, you can begin to get a sense of what will happen 5-8 days away -- we knew there would be a storm Sunday into Monday, even a week out. However, to get the details right, you often need to wait until the storm is just 2-3 days away. But think about. Even if weather forecasting isn't perfect, this is still an amazing feat of science! Enjoy the snow, Colorado. Looks like the cold air arrives between about 6pm-9pm Sunday night and most mountains get a few inches. The eastern foothills and southern mountains may do the best with 3-6" if they're lucky.
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About The Author

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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