Monday was a partly sunny day with a high temperature in the 20s to low 30s.

Now on Tuesday, snow showers are already beginning to fall as a southern storm tracks toward Colorado.

The storm from Tuesday to Thursday will track south of Colorado, and it will be cut off from the main west-to-east flow of weather and will wobble around a bit. Since forecasts for cut-off storms are usually less accurate than other storms, I have lower-than-normal confidence in the snow forecast for the next few days.

My best estimate at this point is that we'll pick up between 2-6 inches from Tuesday through Thursday morning. The highest chance for the steadiest and most intense snow should be from Wednesday evening through Thursday morning, so Thursday morning may be a powder day. Also, please keep in mind that this forecast has high uncertainty - if we happen to miss the most intense snowfall, accumulations could be just a coating to an inch or two, and if we happen to see a few waves of intense snowfall, we might wind up in the 5-10 inch range for accumulations.

After the storm, from Friday through the middle of next week, most of the Rockies will be in a dry weather pattern, and that includes us here in Colorado, so look forward to sunshine and warm-ish temperatures with daytime on-mountain highs in the 30s. The low sun angle of mid-December will preserve our snowpack, but we will not see any new snow. Perhaps crews will be able to open some more terrain during this time.

The longer-range forecast continues to hint at a return to stormy weather during the final 5-10 days of December. However, I do not know when the next storm will arrive, as some of the longer-range data shows snow returning as early as about December 20-21st and other data shows that the transition to stormy weather will take longer with snow not returning until at least December 23rd or beyond. Let's hope that snow during the final week-ish of December makes up for the upcoming week of dry weather!

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ
Meteorologist at OpenSnow.com

Snow conditions as of Tuesday morning

New snow mid-mountain:
* 0” (24 hours Monday 500am to Tuesday 500am)
* 0” (Overnight Monday 400pm to Tuesday 500am)

New snow upper-mountain:
* 0” (24 hours Monday 500am to Tuesday 500am)
* 0” (Overnight Monday 400pm to Tuesday 500am)

Last snowfall:
* 2” Friday (Dec 8)

Terrain
* 1 of 17 lifts
* 16 of 147 trails
* Latest update

Snowpack compared to the 30-year average:
* 70%