Summary

The cold front is still on track to arrive on Friday evening, leaving snow flakes, clouds, and chilly air on Saturday morning over the eastern mountains. The weekend’s weather will be mostly dry for most of Colorado, with more showers returning early next week. Another cold front should push through eastern Colorado later next week.

 

Details

On Thursday morning, I was so excited about the potential for cool air and snow in the future that I neglected to talk about the current situation, which is that some snow had been accumulating on the summits of 14ers in central Colorado.

 

Here is a picture from Thursday morning near the summit of La Plata Peak, just east of Aspen.

Source: Jordan White

 

We’ll likely see this scene (snow on the ground at elevations over 12,000 feet) repeated on Friday night and Saturday morning as a cold front pushes through the northern and eastern parts of Colorado. Look for showers (snow at higher elevations) on Friday afternoon and Friday night, and then a blanket of low clouds along and east the divide lingering into Saturday morning. If you’re hiking above about 11,000 feet on Saturday morning near the divide (Rocky Mountain National Park, Indian Peaks, Summit County, Ten Mile Range, Sawatch, near Pikes Peak), you could be treated to a beautiful sunrise above the clouds.

 

In the wake of Friday’s cold front, we’ll experience drier air over the weekend, so the threat of midday and afternoon storms will be low and mostly confined to the southeastern San Juans and Sangre de Cristo ranges.

 

Moisture will return early next week, so we’ll see more midday and afternoon showers at that time. And then, the mid-range models show another cold front pushing through Colorado later next week (around Thursday, August 25th), so look forward to more high-elevation snow flakes at that time, and perhaps another few days of drier weather late next week and the following weekend due to the dry air filtering in behind the cold front.

 

Have a great weekend, and please post pictures of being “above the clouds” or of snow on the ground in the comments below!

 

JOEL GRATZ

 

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