mayjawintastawm

Hockey is more fun to talk about than weather, where a really interesting Spring multi-hazard event is likely to turn into nothing more than another windy, extreme-fire-danger event because of lack of moisture. Guess there could be a "fire-nado" outbreak. NWS Boulder is really amped up about it in the late afternoon AFD.

Lowe's and Home Depot are having a run on the most appropriate garden tool for this spring... the jackhammer.

On 4/2/2022 at 7:17 PM, ValpoVike said:

April and early May can bring some big snow…

Of course! Spring-Summer does not exclude snow... in fact it would be welcome.

Time for a Spring-Summer thread. Today it was 70 and nice. Snow and ice is gone and flowers emerging.

11.4" snow in March, season total 45.9". Time for a Spring-Summer thread.

On 3/21/2022 at 5:52 PM, LakeNormanStormin said:

Good friend of mine is moving to Colorado and drove cross country from North Carolina.

Him and his girlfriend are stranded in heavy snow squalls in their car on HWY 24 just west of Burlington, CO.

Been there for a few hours now. It's crazy he says. When I 70 got shut down, they were diverted to 24.

Locals are trying to pull cars out of the blowing snow drifts. Crazy stuff.

Yeah, that was unexpected and even yesterday morning they weren't expecting more than 4-5 inches. You can't really see anything when it gets like that. It was pretty localized, really only about 50 miles of heavy stuff. Not good for calving, going on right now at the many ranches in the area. Fortunately it wasn't that cold, and the blizzard was very short lived. Hope your friends got to where they were going without too much trouble.

Not only that, it isn't just a miss for us but a bit of a dud snow-wise for everyone. Only warnings are near the CO-NM border and they are marginal at best. Mostly this will be a rain and severe weather maker, well east and south of the area.

Longer term and not necessarily Mountain specific, this caught my eye today.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu

Almost the entire lower 48 west of about 95 degrees west longitude, plus Hawaii, is in moderate drought or worse. Wow.

1 hour ago, Chinook said:

For Monday-Wednesday, the ECMWF just doesn't want to predict as much snow for eastern Colorado as does the GFS and others. Maybe that's a sign that there are many details yet to be worked out.

NWS BOU is sounding more pessimistic, driving it south. This last one was nice and wet, one more and we'll be in good shape heading into April. I sure hope 2022 is not like 2021. We (and even more, the rest of the West!) could use a break from the June-Dec dry sauna pattern.

4 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

This one was tough to measure, but I'm going to go with 10". SOmeone reported 12" a few miles SSW of me, but I can't justify that with anything I'm measuring

Cool! Elevation was key. I got 5.2" of cement after about 0.25" rain, will see what the final water equivalent was but I'm thinking the ratio in the snow was about 8:1 or maybe even less.

This will be interesting! I'm guessing the mets in the area are needing extra antacids with this one. Point forecast for me says 0.98" QPF and 7.4" snow. 

16 hours ago, Chinook said:

The 00z NAM/GFS/Canadian really do like the Palmer Divide, Colorado Springs, and most of the foothills above 7000ft. GFS has over 15" above 7000ft west of Denver. Maybe the models have figured out a few more aspects of the storm, maybe not.

As for me, I believe I've gotten 39.5" since December 31st and 0.5" before December 31st. (3.10" since Dec 31st and 0.14" from Nov 1st-Dec 30th). Much of the snow that is in the shade has melted. The snow that has been in the shade for all this time is crusty snow that has been there since December 31st. Many individual days were snowy without a complete melt when it was 50-60 degrees, at least for very shady areas or small hills facing away from the sun. It's really nice to see some blue skies and 55 degrees.

Unfortunately, we can still say this late winter has still been drought/weak winter for western areas.

And, by the way, this is the one-year anniversary of the blizzard, when many of us got 20" of snow, blizzard conditions existed for many areas, and the water content was absolutely impressive, over 3" at my place.

Nice to see a more Spring-like moisture pattern. QPF has actually been increasing as the Wed/Thu event approaches, a rare thing!

That blizzard last year dumped around 24" here and also had >3" water, which  helped us stay green until the 4th of July when everything flipped to what it has been since.

On 3/12/2022 at 7:52 PM, Chinook said:

 

Edit: 00z GFS has a lot of QPF for Denver area. So this is sure to taunt Mayjawintastawm when it doesn't work out right.

Technique: 1) ignore models more than 48 hours out unless they all agree; 2) cut QPF forecasted at 48 hrs pre-event in half. Easier said than done, but preserves mental health and wastes less time. 

We've had 2.2" of snow, remarkably high density for the temps- really, dust fell all day long so not a lot of air in the snow. I'm guessing we're close to 0.2" WE. It was 12-14 F most of the afternoon, now down to 5. Brr. Not March.

Whatever happens, we really need a big slug of moisture. 0.6" QPF 4-5 days out turns into 0.4" at the event onset and ends up verifying as 0.2", every single time.

My best guess is we got 3.5" over the entire Fri-Sun period. That big band last night that dropped 2 + inches 5 miles in any direction gave us less than an inch for some reason- I was driving around in it then got home and it was gone. The COCORAHS site near me got 1.0" Fri till 7 AM this morning.

On 2/10/2022 at 3:13 PM, PWMan said:

Heading out to Bozeman, MT on the 19th for a few days of skiing at Bridger and Big Sky, and I'm definitely getting concerned about the warmth and lack of snow. A week or two it looked like the pattern was going to shift, but now it appears that any cool-downs will be transient and any precipitation minimal. I'm committed either way, and am hoping it's not too much of a bust.

so- was it cold enough for ya? How was the snow?

8 hours ago, ValpoVike said:

Sorry to hear that. From your reports, it sounds like a dreaded screw hole has cursed you this season.

Actually, we're not doing too bad though the last couple weeks has been really dry. So far in Feb we have 17.7" for a season total of 34.4", with March and April yet to go. Conservatively, I'm guessing we'll wind up with about 45", less than normal of 55-60", probably 3rd or 4th lowest of our 12 winters here.

20 hours ago, Chinook said:

my observations from this annoying storm
feb 21-22: 0.5"  (0.04") record low maximum temp for Fort Collins
feb 22-23: 1.2" (0.12") Loveland storm reports showed 1.5 to 4.0",  record low maximum temp at Fort Collins
feb 23-34: 1.6", (0.13")
feb 24- still, just temperatures in the teens

yeah- we got as low as -6, were below zero 3 mornings, and totaled a whopping 2.7" of snow. Today it finally got up to 31.

8 hours ago, beavis1729 said:

Interesting that you think Chicago and NW IN have cold winters. 

My whole point was that their winters aren't nearly cold enough - and this is because you can't count on snow on the ground throughout most of DJF. You basically need average high temps in Jan to be 20-25F (and Dec & Feb with averages no warmer than 25-30F) in order to have a true wintry climate with consistent snow cover.  That way, when you do get the occasional mild pattern, you don't torch (meaning no days over 40F).

Not saying there needs to be 4 feet of snow on the ground...but a reliable 5-10+" would be nice during most of DJF.  You know - Currier and Ives scenes, White Christmas, frozen lakes, etc.

Unfortunately, Chicago's winter temps are about 10 degrees too warm for that. 

Also, I wouldn't say we have "long stretches of sub-zero cold".  Chicago only averages about 7 days each winter with low temps below zero.

Yes, I agree that it's all personal preference...but it just surprises me that people on a (mainly) winter weather forum seem to prefer mild/warm/hot weather over cold weather. It's frustrating for me personally because I hope to find kindred spirits on this forum...knowing that most of the general public hates winter.  

Agree- actually, my perfect winter would have around 100 inches of snow total, temps reliably in the 20s-30s most days 12/1-2/28 (of course, some 60 and some 0) to make for good ice on the lakes, and sunny more often than not. But the last couple days here have been brutal, with highs not above 10 and lows in the single numbers below zero with minimal sun. Late Feb is not typically the heart of winter either.... this on MLK weekend would be easier to take.

Having a new puppy at home who is not yet housebroken does not help.  Volunteers for 2AM potty breaks welcome.

I think I have not encountered this prolonged cold, cloudy, light snow type of thing in my 11 years in Colorado. It's been below 10 F for almost 48 hours and we've had 1.4" of styrofoam snow with vanishingly small water equivalent. Even the dogs don't want to spend more than a few minutes outside. Good for ice reinforcement on the lake but not much else.

We'll see. Models are pretty consistent with about 0.6" QPF for the metro area... of course that's worth about a nickel this far out, maybe.

4.2" at 10:20 PM, much fluffier than the weekend's snow, probably half to 2/3 of the water content.

and... crickets. Meh. What if they gave a watch and nobody came?

Winter Storm Watch for Wed afternoon/night just issued for the northern and central Front Range urban corridor. Seems a bit borderline- ? wonder if something changed.