Fire Weather

We have seven active wildfires ongoing over northern Colorado. This is a good map to see an overview of the fires, but do not treat it as official information.

Sunday's weather (October 18) brought a gift to the front range in the form of cold temperatures, high humidity, and a wind from the east. This helped quell the fires at the lower elevations.

But, above about 8,000 feet, a dry and warm wind from the west continued to blow, and this helped another wildfire to grow, the Lefthand Canyon fire, which was only a few miles from the existing Calwood Fire just northwest of Boulder.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will be dry and warm and that will not aid crews to get control over any of the wildfires over the northern mountains. We just have to hang on until later in the week when colder temperatures and some snow should arrive.

Snowmaking

An OpenSnow fan who is also a pilot sent me these images taken on Monday morning (October 19). You can see the snowmaking efforts that are underway at Arapahoe Basin, Keystone, and Copper.

Temperatures through Wednesday will be borderline for efficient snowmaking. But then we'll see colder readings later this week and very cold temperatures on Sunday and Monday. With the upcoming cooler weather, my bet is that snowmaking will ramp up and either Arapahoe Basin or Loveland might be able to open by the end of October. That's just a guess based on the weather forecast and I have no inside information, so don't hold me to it:-)

There will be two chances for snow coming up over the next week.

The first chance for snow will be on Thursday night into Friday as a weak storm skims by northern Colorado. At this point, I am expecting just a few flakes to a few inches for the mountains near and north of I-70. Temperatures will cool late Thursday into Friday which could help snowmakers in the northern mountains.

The second chance for snow will be from Sunday to Monday. This storm has more potential than the Thursday/Friday system and there could be both a northern and a southern component to the system which would mean that snow could fall across all mountains.

An early look at the multi-model forecast from the University of Utah shows the lighter snow that's possible on Thursday night and the more significant snow that's possible on Sunday into Monday.

For the sake of our sanity, let's focus on the average of all the forecasts, which would be 3-6 or 4-8 inches on Sunday into Monday. There is absolutely a chance for more snow than this, and a chance for lower totals. Of course I want to see a LOT of snow, but mostly I am just getting excited for cold temperatures and some precipitation which should lower wildfire risk.

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Granby, Beaver Creek, Vail, Ski Cooper, Copper, Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, 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