Colorado Daily Snow

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By Joel Gratz, Founding Meteorologist Posted 9 years ago October 12, 2014

Snow day

Summary:

Snow on Sunday for most of Colorado. The mountains passes will be snow covered and the freezing level should get down to most mountain bases by evening. The highest totals will be 5-7+ inches over northern Colorado, with 2-4 inches for central Colorado and a few inches in the northern San Juans. Then it looks like dry and sunny weather starting on Monday and continuing for about 10 days.

Details:

A few snow showers fell on the central and northern mountains just before dawn, but the cold front and heavier snow has not yet hit most mountains. The radar image below shows the heavier precipitation along the cold front just to the north and west of Rifle. Expect a period of low visibility and a quick couple of inches as this band moves through later this morning. Maybe even the first closure of I-70 as unsuspecting drivers with bald tires traverse the Tunnels and Vail Pass. I hope this doesn't occur, but hey, it's I-70. Anything can happen.

colorado radar snow ski foreast report
Source: Weathertap.com

After the band of heavier snow in the AM, we'll see snow showers through the rest of Sunday into Sunday night with another few inches of accumulation and cooler temperatures. Flakes should fall down to 7,000-8,000 so there could be some accumulation at the base of many ski areas. The highest snow totals will be along and north of I-70 with about 6 inches or a bit more, while the snowfall decreases south of I-70 toward the San Juans. The map below is from our Powder Finder and shows the National Weather Service forecast (amounts look pretty good to me).

colorado snow ski forecast report
Source: OpenSnow.com Powder Finder

The accumulating snow will end around midnight Sunday night though we'll see clouds and flurries persist into Monday morning. Monday will be a chilly day but the sun will come out by midday if not sooner.

And .... that's about it in terms of interesting weather for the next 10 days. The storm track will be to our north and west next week and the week after with most of the precipitation falling on Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. We might get buzzed by a few of these storms, but that shouldn't mean anything more than gusty winds (for Wednesday and Thursday) and a few more clouds. All three major weather models (American GFS, European, Canadian) are rather certain about the storm track staying to our north of the next 10 days, and if all three models agree, than that's good enough for me to have confidence in a long-range forecast.

We'll likely see some energy from storminess in the northern Pacific Ocean push into the west coast and Rockies late in October, but there's no way to know any of the details at this point.

In terms of snowmaking potential, it looks very good Sunday night, Monday, and Tuesday morning. After that it'll be borderline. Temperatures won't spend a lot of time below freezing during the overnight hours, but the low humidity will help. We'll see what happens.

I've looked a bit at how October snowfall correlates with snowfall during the rest of the season and I remember the correlation not being very strong. This is not reason for wild optimism, and it's also reason to avoid getting nervous about the season ahead. I guarantee that you'll have some great powder days during the next 6 months, so no need to worry too much:-)

JOEL GRATZ

About Our Forecaster

Joel Gratz

Founding Meteorologist

Joel Gratz is the Founding Meteorologist of OpenSnow and has lived in Boulder, Colorado since 2003. Before moving to Colorado, he spent his childhood as a (not very fast) ski racer in eastern Pennsylvania.

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