There's nothing betting than waking up to fresh powder on the snow stake! Here is the summit stake at Steamboat, in northern Colorado.

What you see at Steamboat is just the beginning of the storm, which will slowly spin over the western US through Tuesday and should drop 10+ inches from northern Colorado north to Wyoming and up through central and eastern Montana.

Not surprisingly, temperatures during the week will be coldest near the storm, with readings about 10 degrees (F) below average.

Forecasting snow more than about five days in advance is not an exercise in accuracy, but weather forecasting models do make decent forecasts for trends in temperature and storminess in the 5-10 day range.

Looking ahead to next week, in the 5-10 day range, there are signals in the models that temperatures should continue to stay near or below average for much of the northern Rockies.

This likely means that we will see another snowstorm or two for the northern Rockies through mid-October, and I hope to know more details over the coming days.

Thanks for reading and for getting psyched about the upcoming season...pow days will be here soon!

JOEL GRATZ