We have been eyeing the southern part of the southern mountains (Purgatory, Wolf Creek) as the likely winners of this storm cycle, and the atmosphere is delivering flakes as we hoped!

A reader-submitted photo from Wolf Creek on Thursday (Feb 21) shows the deepness!

Below are snow reports on Friday morning at 500am. The first number shows the 24-hour total from Thursday morning to Friday morning, and the second number is the 48-hour storm total from Wednesday morning to Friday morning.

* Purgatory: 24” / 31”
* Wolf Creek: 19” / 29”
* Powderhorn: 13” / 15”
* Hesperus: 10” / 20” (estimate)
* Silverton: 6” / 15”

The storm is bringing winds from the south, which heavily favors Purgatory, Wolf Creek, and the small mountain of Hesperus just west of Durango, while other mountains are not favored in this southerly wind setup. 

Also, the strongest band of snow on Thursday night stayed a bit further west than earlier models indicated, and thus it missed Telluride but did track right over Powderhorn for many hours, and this is how Powderhorn received their 13-inch snow total. At one point on Thursday night, an automated weather station on the Grand Mesa, near Powderhorn, recorded one or two hours of 4 inches of snow per hour. Whoa!

Friday’s Forecast

What we saw on Thursday night will somewhat continue on Friday. The setup is great for the far southern mountains due to the wind from the south, and other mountains will need luck to get a stronger band of snow to hit their area.

It’s a good bet that the favored southern mountains and maybe Powderhorn should see an additional 5-10+ inches on Friday, and other mountains will range from a coating to maybe 6+ inches depending if a band of snow hits or does not hit. I could go into detail about where the latest models show these bands hitting, but the models were not super accurate on Thursday night and show a lot of changes as they update every few hours,  so there is no sense in trusting the details of where the models think the individual bands are going to be on Friday and Friday night.

Graphically, the latest CAIC 2km WRF model distinctly shows that the most snow will be in the far southern mountains on Friday. In the central and northern mountains, you can see some banded snow amounts stretching from south-southwest to north-northeast, though I have low confidence in this part of the forecast.

On Friday night, as the storm departs and the wind shifts to blow from the west and northwest, we’ll see more snow on the backside of the storm.

And then we should be mostly dry on Saturday with just a few remaining snow showers and clouds in the morning. Thanks to the snow that falls after lifts close on Friday afternoon, there should be plenty of powder stashes on Saturday morning in the far southern mountains with lower-end powder amounts possible elsewhere.

The longer-range forecast is becoming a bit more clear.

As we talked about yesterday, it looks like most of the snow during the next week will stay to the north of Colorado.

The forecast for the weekend shows snow staying to the north.

And the snow forecast for next week continues to push the snow north with just light amounts over our northern and perhaps central mountains.

With a little luck, perhaps some of the energy to our north will drop a bit further south and bring more snow to Colorado next Thursday or Friday, though even if this happens, right now I am expecting just light amounts.

The good news is that all models are trending toward showing a storm for us here in Colorado around Sunday, March 3, with perhaps another one or two storms during the week between March 3-10. The graphic below shows the multi-model average snow forecast for Aspen (in the middle of our state) with a clear peak around Sunday, March 3 and chances for snow continuing beyond that.

Thanks for reading!

My next update will be on Saturday morning.

JOEL GRATZ

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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