Monday was a beautiful day across Colorado with a few showers in the afternoon, especially in the southern mountains.

Now on Tuesday morning, the sun is rising with clear skies, and this is allowing the visible satellite image to show us the beautiful snow-capped peaks (most of the white color in this image is snow as the only clouds are over the eastern plains of Colorado).

Source: WeatherTap.com

 

The rest of this week should be dry without measurable snow. The sunniest days will likely be Tuesday and Wednesday, then on Thursday and Friday expect a few clouds and maybe a brief shower as our next storm slowly moves toward us from the southwest (sound familiar?!).

This next storm will likely bring a gusty wind on Friday into Saturday, and then the best chance of measurable snow will occur from late Saturday through early Monday. The best chance of a powder day will be on Sunday (Mother’s Day) and Monday, and it looks like the most snow will fall in the northern mountains, which coincides with the areas that will be open this weekend: Mary Jane’s closing day is on Saturday, Loveland’s closing day is on Sunday, and Abasin will be open for the foreseeable future. Snow amounts could be in the 5-10 inch range, though temperatures will be warm so the best accumulations will be above 10,000-11,000 feet.

Since it’s late in the season, and since we likely won’t see measurable snow for the rest of this week, I’m going to take a day off on Wednesday and will be back with another update on Thursday morning. Also, I am going to stop making the detailed snow forecast for each mountain and transition it back to our automated calculations, which is a mix of the European weather model and the local National Weather Service offices. If I feel that this automated forecast is much different than the forecast I would make, I’ll mention that in the next Colorado Daily Snow posts.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you are able to take advantage of this week’s gorgeous weather!

JOEL GRATZ

 

PS - I will be giving a talk during the evening of Wednesday, May 4th at the Silverthorne Pavilion in Summit County. This will be a part of the “State of the River” event and should be a great evening covering water and snow information. My talk specifically will revisit the season-long forecast for this past season and look ahead to next season, provide tips on forecasting snow around Summit County, and I’ll also discuss the history of the business side of OpenSnow. Finally, I’ll chat a bit about what we’re up to this summer with a mobile app focused on lightning prediction for hikers. Hope to see you there, and click here for more details: http://opsw.co/stateofriver

 

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Granby, Beaver Creek, Vail, Ski Cooper, Copper, Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, Abasin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Along the Divide
Loveland, Abasin, 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, Durango, Wolf Creek (Telluride and Silverton are on the northern side of the southern mountains)