Colorado Daily Snow

Update

First up today, I am so excited to announce that we have iPhone widgets.

Widgets!

It will take you 30-60 seconds to set up, and then you'll be able to see current conditions, check the forecast, and keep an eye on your favorite cams right on your home screen(s), without opening our app.

Here is an explainer article, and below I show three of my phone's home screens with widgets.

On the left, I have a current conditions widget that always shows the weather at my current location (it follows me from home to wherever I am going). I set up the data to show the time of the last weather update, the sky condition, the high and low temperature for the day, and the sunrise and sunset times. You can change what is displayed on this widget (including recent and forecast snowfall), and you can also set this widget to provide information for other locations, like cities, ski areas, and any custom locations that you set up (anywhere in the world!).

In the middle and on the right, I created widgets for the snow summary, which includes the most recent 24-hour snow report and the 10-day forecast, as well as two widgets for cams that, at the moment, are showing off the fall foliage. For the cams, you can choose whether to display the cam name (to remember what you're looking at) or to not show the cam name, so that you have a clear view of a snow stake, for example. In the cam widgets above, I opted to not display the cam name so I could see the view in all of its beauty.

These widgets are available to All-Access subscribers, and you can install as many widgets as you want! They are available in our latest app version for iPhone. Again, here is the explainer article, which shows how to install these widgets.

This Weekend

A large and somewhat powerful storm will be hanging out to the west of Colorado throughout the weekend.

What this means for us here in Colorado during the weekend is that we'll see gusty winds from the south and southwest along with a few showers, which could fall as snow at the highest elevations.

Winds will be somewhat strong on Saturday with gusts between about 20-40mph, and the winds will be faster on Sunday with gusts of 40-60mph.

These strong winds over the weekend could bring down some of the golden aspen leaves that are peaking across a lot of northern and central Colorado, so get out soon to see the sights!

Next Week

The storm to our west will finally move over Colorado around Tuesday and Wednesday. 

The storm could come through in pieces, with some drier air as well, so at the moment, our multi-model snow forecast is only showing a couple of inches at ski area mid-mountain locations.

The air temperature will be cool enough for snow to fall down to about 8,000-9,000 feet, so this will likely be the lowest-elevation snowfall of this fall season so far. The higher elevations, near and above treeline, will likely see the higher accumulations, maybe upwards of 6 inches depending on how the storm comes together.

The snowfall on Tuesday and Wednesday will be fun to see, though most of it is likely to melt during the following week with the exception of some high-elevation shaded north slopes where snow will stick around.

Longer Range

Following the storm on October 3-4, we may see another shot of cooler air and a bit of snow later in the week, and then we will likely transition back to warmer and dry weather for the week of October 9-13.

Even with warmer-than-average temperatures, high-elevation snowmaking may be possible thanks to the dry air, since it's the wet-bulb temperature that matters for snowmaking, which is a combination of the air temperature and the amount of moisture in the air, with less moisture leading to lower wet-bulb temperatures.

Upcoming Events

Please join me at one of these community talks. I'll post more details soon, and there will likely be at least one or two more of these talks added to the schedule.

• October 12 at the Westin Riverfront in Avon
• November 9 at the American Mountaineering Center in Golden

Next post

I'll post weekly in September and October, and then I will start daily coverage most likely in late October.

Thanks for reading!

Joel Gratz

Announcements

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