A storm began to drop snow on Colorado’s northern mountains on Friday night. The Saturday 500 am official snow report said 2 inches fell on the mid-mountain snow stake, and now at 700 am as I write this, I see that an additional two inches have accumulated for a total of four inches. Enjoy the first turns of the day, which should be soft!

Most short-range, high-resolution weather forecast models show that snow showers will continue for the northern mountains through Saturday afternoon, and for Winter Park, this likely means that we’ll see times of dry and cloudy weather mixed with times of steadier and intense snowfall. We should be able to grab another 1-3 inches from this system, or perhaps even a bit more as it seems that this storm is out-performing the forecast by a bit. This new snow should help the north-facing groomers to become a bit softer, and the north-facing non-groomed runs might also ski well since it usually takes 4+ inches for this to happen.

Following this storm, Saturday night and Sunday should bring dry weather with light winds, then on Monday, we will have a chance for a few showers as a weak storm moves close to Colorado.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be dry and warm with high temperatures in the 40s.

On Wednesday night or Thursday, a storm cycle will begin with a chance for snow continuing through about Monday, March 19th.

During this time, expect 12-18 hour periods when we will have a better chance of snow, followed by similar time periods with no snow.

The setup for this storm cycle will not be the most favorable for Winter Park as we will likely see a wind direction from the southwest or west (Winter Park gets the most snow with a wind direction from the west-northwest and northwest).

However, multiple days with new snow is exactly what we’ll need to soften the base across the mountain and perhaps create a fun powder day or two, so this should still be a useful storm cycle. During the next few days, I’ll try to nail down the timing of the snow so we can hopefully talk about which days will offer the deepest powder.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for an update each morning!

JOEL GRATZ, Meteorologist at OpenSnow.com