Friday started chilly with snowflakes in the air over the northern mountains, but by midday and afternoon that disturbance moved away and sunshine returned to all of the mountains.

Now on Saturday morning, we are waking up to sunny skies and the satellite shows that there are no clouds anywhere over Colorado or even nearby.

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday will dry days with plenty of sunshine. On-mountain temperatures should rise to the upper 30s to low 40s. The only exception to this will be on Sunday when we'll see cooler temperatures over the far northern mountains close to Wyoming and east of the mountains over the northern front range cities.

While I am confident that we'll see stormy weather next week and chances for snow during most days, I continue to have low confidence around the details of where and when we might see the most snow.

We will start to feel the storm on Monday night into Tuesday morning with the first chances for showers and clouds. And we will continue to feel the impact of the storm throughout all of next week, into the following weekend (April 17-18), and likely into early the following week (April 19-20). It will NOT snow every hour of every day during this week-long stretch, but the storm will be around during these days.

Here is what the storm will look like next week. It'll be centered to our west and will toss pieces of energy into and past Colorado now and again.

While the forecast models do a good job identifying the general pattern shown above, they do a poor job of figuring out the details of when and where each piece of energy will track, hence the remaining uncertainty in the forecast.

When we look at the updated ensemble models below, each of which shows the average of many forecasts, we can see that the only consensus is that the best chance for the most snow will be over the northeastern mountains.

I continue to think that the middle-to-end of next week should be the best chance to find some powder over the northeastern mountains (roughly near and north of I-70 and near the divide). Hopefully, we can narrow down this vague forecast soon, but as I mentioned yesterday, with a multi-piece storm like this, it is likely that we'll need to rely on a lot of real-time data to figure out how to find the best snow because forecasts will probably remain pretty uncertain throughout the storm.

Stoke pictures!

I have a few more reader-submitted pictures to share over the coming two weeks.

Here are Talia and Mijael up high at Copper mountain!

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

New Book!

There is a new book called "Hunting Powder: A Skier's Guide to Finding Colorado's Best Snow" and I think it's a great read for you if you are somewhat of a geek about snow and weather forecasting here in Colorado and looking to deepen your knowledge about meteorology and finding deep snow. This book is somewhere between a textbook and a 'what you need to know' guide to forecasting and I am mentioning it here because I reviewed the book and wrote the forward:-) Check out more details and please do consider buying a copy: http://opsw.co/HuntingPowder

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Bluebird Backcountry, 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