On Wednesday we enjoyed a beautiful spring powder day with 2-10 inches of fresh snow in the morning and then the sun worked over this new snow by midday. Something that caught my eye was this blog post by A-Basin COO Alan Henceroth where he wrote that while the number of people at A-Basin was well within their comfortable carrying capacity, parking lots filled very early because many more people had only one occupant per vehicle while on most other days this season there are more people in each car. Is there something about spring powder that makes it a solo mission?!

Thursday will be a day that we wait for the next storm. We'll see partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the 20s and 30s.

Thursday night will be the time of our next, fast-moving storm. Snow should fall between Thursday at sunset and Friday at sunrise. This will be a powerful storm with a wind from the north-northwest, north, and north-northeast, and based on its track, the most snow should fall closest to the continental divide and near and north of I-70. 

All of the latest forecast models have adjusted to track the storm a little farther to the east, which likely will mean lower snow totals of 2-5 inches for mountains farther to the west and still respectable snow totals of 4-8+ inches closer to the divide. A wind from the north-northwest and north is very favorable for Winter Park (the Mary Jane terrain is still open), so I will be watching their snow stake closely.

Below are some of the latest snow forecasts, which have all shifted east since yesterday.

The multi-model average:

The CAIC high-resolution:

The OpenSnow version #1:

And the OpenSnow version #2, which shows a somewhat different snowfall pattern, but still one that favors the northern divide:

The temperature with this storm will be chilly with a reading in the teens on Friday morning, so it will be a winter-like feel for the morning and this might be the last winter-like feeling that we see until the fall.

Then the sun will come out at some point on Friday morning and midday and will turn the new snow to mush, as we expect at this time of the year.

Following the storm on Thursday night into Friday, we will have dry and mostly sunny weather on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday with a high temperature in the 40s and perhaps the low 50s.

After that, we will likely see showers around May 3-5 with another potentially showery or stormy period around May 8-10.

The exception to the forecast above will be the mountains along the divide which could see showers as soon as April 29 and every day through the first 10 days of May as a wind from the east blows some moisture into this region. We will absolutely take the additional moisture!

Thanks for reading!

Joel Gratz

PS - I was just on the "No More Mondays" podcast and talked more about the business side of OpenSnow and how I thought about leaving my full-time job in 2010 to work on OpenSnow. Here is a link to the show.

My final post of the season will be on Friday, April 28.

And even though our Daily Snow posts will take a break over the summer, remember that your OpenSnow All-Access subscription (list of all features) is good for 365 days.

Here are some things that you might find useful during the summer and fall:

- Forecasts Anywhere on Earth
- Live & Forecast Radar
- Wildfire Smoke Forecast Maps
- Estimated Trail Conditions
- Air Quality Forecast Maps
- Hourly Lightning Forecasts
- Historical Weather
- Offline Satellite & Terrain Maps

This means you can use OpenSnow to track the freeze/thaw cycle for corn snow and peak-bagging this spring, avoid lightning and wildfire smoke this summer, escape to the desert next fall, and find every powder day next winter.

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