Sunday morning’s conditions were soft at many mountains in the northern half of Colorado with a few inches of snow falling after the morning report.

Following a lull on Sunday, another weak wave of snow dropped 1-3 inches on Sunday evening.

And now on Monday morning at sunrise, yet another wave of snow is bringing the most intense snowfall rates to the central and southern mountains.

The cam at the base of Crested Butte shows the intense snow in the central mountains. Crested Butte's mid-mountain snow stake received 3-4 inches on Sunday night and then 2-3 inches accumulated on Monday morning between 500-700am.

Expect Monday morning’s steady snow to continue through about noon and then it’ll transition to on-then-off showers.

Monday night and Tuesday will be dry with a solid break between systems.

Then another wave will move through on Tuesday night. For nearly one week, this Tuesday night wave has been the most consistent part of the forecast. A few days ago, a few models trended the track of this wave farther north, but it still looked like it would bring solid accumulations to the northern mountains. This was the forecast I posted yesterday for the Tuesday night wave.

Unfortunately, in the past 24 hours, all models have trended the track of this storm even farther north. This means that on Tuesday night only the mountains that are north of I-70 could see a quick 2-6 inches. This includes Steamboat, Winter Park, Eldora, and Cameron Pass. Here is the latest forecast for Tuesday night.

Wednesday and Thursday morning will be dry.

Then a stronger storm (and one with more moisture) will bring snow to the southern mountains on Thursday afternoon and Thursday night with all mountains seeing snow during the day on Friday. Let’s go with 5-10 inches for most mountains on Friday and 10-20 inches for the southern mountains that are favored by southwest winds (Wolf Creek, Purgatory, Silverton). The best powder will be on Friday, with perhaps a few inches of snow lingering on Friday night for the northern mountains, and this would keep conditions soft on Saturday morning.

The atmosphere will shift the stormy weather pattern away from the western United States and Canada with mostly dry weather for us from about January 18-25th. After that, it’s too far into the future to know if we’ll see storms sneak through or around the ridge of high pressure that will cover the west or if we’ll stay dry. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

My next update will be on Tuesday morning.

JOEL GRATZ

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