Monday was a dry day, and then as the models promised, a fast-moving storm clipped the northern mountains late on Monday night. As of 530am on Tuesday, here are the snow totals. There could be an additional coating to an inch of accumulation between 530am and mid-morning, but for the most part, these reports show the storm total.

Northern Mountains
Arapahoe Basin - 3"
Beaver Creek - 2"
Breckenridge - 3"
Copper - 4"
Keystone - 3"
Loveland - 3"
Steamboat - 2"
Vail - 2"
Winter Park - 1"

Central Mountains
Crested Butte - 1"

Copper reported the most snow at 4 inches. Here is their mid-mountain snow stake camera.

Many people scoff at snow reports like this morning, showing only a few inches of snow. But the reality is that here in Colorado, these small storms are important and help to build our snowpack. Nope, you will not be skiing in chest deep powder this morning, but a few inches of fresh snow makes for a fun morning and adds just a bit to our base. I'll take it, especially because our current weather pattern is not favorable for snow.

As a reminder, you can see snow reports and webcams for each mountain here on OpenSnow, and if you log in and set up a few favorite mountains, you can compare the snow report and forecast across your favorite mountains on a single screen. Plus you can get an email or mobile push alerts (if you want them) when your favorite mountains get fresh snow. A lot of people think that OpenSnow is only the "Colorado Daily Snow", but we have much more information than just this write up!

Even though our snowpack is below average and terrain is limited, many mountains are open or are about to open. Here is the list as I know it as of Tuesday morning.

Mountains that are open
Arapahoe Basin
Breckenridge
Copper
Keystone
Loveland
Purgatory
Winter Park
Wolf Creek

Mountains that are opening Wednesday
Beaver Creek
Steamboat
Vail

Mountains that are opening Thursday
Aspen Mountain
Crested Butte
Monarch
Snowmass

The weather for the rest of this week should be dry and warmer each day as the storm track will stay well to our northwest.

In fact, the cold air will retreat so far that many locations in the Pacific Northwest will see extremely high snow levels with most resorts receiving raindrops. Yuck. But that should turn around next week...

All three major models – European, American GFS, Canadian – show that the last five days of November will be much warmer than average. With these warmer temperatures, do not expect a lot of additional terrain to open as snowmaking will only be possible for some part of the nighttime.

Then, all three major models show temperatures that are closer to average as we begin the month of December.

The map above might not look exciting because there is not a large area of blue over Colorado (blue shows below-average temperatures), but the map is exciting to me because it shows a shift from warmer-than-average temperatures toward average, and that's a good shift.

In terms of individual storms, our next chance for snow will be on or around November 29th. After that, I cannot tell you when exactly the next storm will hit, but all models show a more active weather pattern across the western US for early December, and with a little luck, that active pattern across the west will translate to more storms here in Colorado.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you again on Wednesday morning!

JOEL GRATZ

Colorado Forecast Page → https://opensnow.com/state/co
Download  → The OpenSnow Mobile App

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Granby, Beaver Creek, Vail, Ski Cooper, Copper, Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, Abasin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, Eldora, 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 – north side of the southern mountains | Purgatory, Wolf Creek – south side of the southern mountains