It’s late on Friday evening, and here’s how much snow we've seen since Thursday night.

Snowmass – 12-14”
Aspen Highlands – 10-12”
Sunlight – 6”
Most other areas – 2-6”

Right now, snow measurements are tough for two reasons.

First, many resorts are closed and many of the snow stake cameras are offline.

Second, and more importantly, every time the sun came out on Friday, some of the snow melted or settled, sometimes by half or more. You can see and account for this on the snow stake camera time lapses, but you can’t figure it out as well when looking at the automated SNOTEL measurements.

In general, all mountains have seen snow with a few inches of accumulation, though some of the lower amounts have melted completely. By far the deepest totals are on the west side of Aspen with up to 14 inches at the higher elevations of Snowmass.

Now on Friday night, not everything is going as planned. While there is plenty of moisture, and snow is falling at some locations, the northeastern mountains are seeing a sliver of dry air which is preventing the more intense snow that we were expecting.

In the animation below, you can see the dry air to the left (west) of the green colors over northeastern Colorado. If you can't see the animation, click here: https://opsw.co/2F4TRuM

This dry air likely prevented more intense snow for many of the northeastern mountains on Friday afternoon and now on Friday evening. I think that snow will eventually move into all of the northeastern mountains on Friday night into Saturday morning. That said, all of the shorter-range, high-resolution models are still not agreeing about the details of the forecast, so uncertainty is much higher than normal. Will the dry air overwhelm? Will the storm slow a bit, allowing the better moisture to wrap around? Ugh, I don't know!

As you can see by the 12-14” totals at Snowmass, big moisture can translate into big snow totals in a short period of time, so I am not giving up on this storm, but I do have very little confidence about what will happen on Friday night.

Let’s hope for the best, and thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

PS - The National Weather Service radar in Denver stopped working at about 745pm on Friday evening, so we're forecasting blind. We can use nearby radars to estimate, but we'll lack a detailed knowledge of where the snow is falling along the front range until the Denver radar comes back online.

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