Colorado Daily Snow

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

By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 4 years ago December 8, 2019

Snowy Sunday, powder Monday AM too

Summary

We woke up to 1-3 inches of snow on Sunday morning. We should see another 1-4 inches during the day on Sunday with a final pop of snow on Sunday night delivering an additional 1-4 inches. This means that last chair on Sunday and first chair on Monday should offer soft snow. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday will be dry. Then the northern and central mountains will have a chance for moderate or significant snow from Friday through Monday.

Short Term Forecast

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Powder

On Saturday, Aspen Highlands opened for the season and this included parts of Highland Bowl. Yeehaw!

Storm Sunday through Monday Morning

We expected light snow to begin on Saturday night, and indeed the snow reports on Sunday morning show 1-3 inches across the state. The three-inch reports are from Wolf Creek, Monarch, Crested Butte, and Aspen Highlands.

Crested Butte just installed a camera on their official snow stake (we display this cam and all other cams for all other resorts here on OpenSnow) and CB’s cam showed the 3 inches on Sunday morning.

For the day on Sunday, we’ll see warm temperatures in the 20s with a wind from the southwest and west-southwest. This should favor the most snow falling in the central mountains and the southern mountains. Also, a band of heavier snow will form along the leading edge of colder air, and this band of snow should hit Steamboat (in the far northern mountains) on Sunday afternoon between 1-3pm, hence the higher totals projected there.

The band of intense snow should work south into the I-70 corridor by 4-6pm on Sunday night and then continue to head south through the evening. Thus, the deeper overnight totals in the forecast below are from I-70 and south as this band moves across the state.

Most of the accumulating snow should be over by Monday morning, though we could see light accumulations on Monday in the northern mountains thanks to northwest flow.

I still think a storm total of 4-10 inches is a reasonable range statewide. We will likely see some mountains near the top or above this range, and it’ll be the southern and central mountains that do well with a flow from the west-southwest on Sunday, and then any northern and central mountain if the band of intense snow on Sunday evening gets hung up and spends more time over a particular spot.

My thinking on the timing of the best snow quality hasn’t changed. We will see soft yet somewhat thick snow on Sunday, and then thanks to the snow on Sunday night, Monday morning's first chair should be the time of the softest and deepest snow.

Extended Forecast

We have talked about the Pacific North American pattern (PNA) previously, and the forecast is trending in the right direction. A negative PNA generally means stormier weather over the western United States. A negative PNA does NOT guarantee big snow here in Colorado, but it does signal that significant snow is a possibility. The graphic below shows the PNA trending negative starting around December 13 and continuing through Christmas.

Thanks to this forecast for a negative PNA, I am cautiously optimistic about our chances of seeing a few good storms during the middle and end of December.

The first of these storms could be a one-two-punch late this week and into the weekend, roughly from Friday, December 13 through Monday, December 16. This storm should favor the northern and central mountains and we could see snow for up to four days in a row. However, there is also a chance that some factors (temperature, wind direction) could not be ideal and snow totals will be on the lower side. It’s too soon to get super excited about the snow potential from Friday-to-Monday, but I am watching these days closely because there might be some powder goodness in there.

Thanks for reading!

My next update will be on Monday 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

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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