mayjawintastawm

Well, the surprise happened. 4.5" of wet cement here at 7:30. Feels like April snow. Another degree warmer and Denver would have had a January rainstorm... when did that last happen?

NAM QPF: 1"

GFS QPF: 0.25"

Reality: 3 drops of rain and 10 flakes of snow. Surprise me, maybe!

Least Denver snow for a season was 21.3" in 1888-9 which isn't too hard to beat- heck, two storms after Easter could get us there. Still a long ways to go. But this is so incredibly boring/frustrating. Even the 21.8" two years ago had us with more by now.

You forgot Narkansas and Narizona.

A day of dust added up to about an inch and a half of snow here. Cold but otherwise underwhelming. Heaviest I've seen reported is about 2 inches. Wowee!

Looks like Denver will have 0.05" at most of precip in Dec (probably more like 0.03"), and the 7th or 8th driest year in over 140 of recordkeeping (yes I know the station moved twice).

And they canceled the Cotton Bowl!?! BC was in for the first time since Doug Flutie (remember him?) was QB and my sister was a freshman way back in 1985. I was looking for a zillion LSRs today and found basically none in the Metroplex area near the time of the game. Guessing too much CIN and cloud debris to get things going. Of course, lightning alone can ruin your day, but still. What happened?

What seems to be happening is that with long-term changes, upper-level patterns are becoming more amplified/persistent so the big storms dig further south and east consistently. So we miss the upslope ones, which provide the most precip. I think that's the more alarming thing, since upslope storms provide the bulk of Oct-April precip east of the Divide till you get east of around 102 W. I have no met training at all, just lots of other science and good at recognizing patterns (I think).

Your last couple hundred miles look a bit dicey at this point. Too early to tell for sure, but snow and icy roads on I-40 in the western TX panhandle and E NM high plains look like a good bet, with temps possibly remaining below freezing for a couple of days. Not a fun place to be if it does snow. Check back in a day or so.

4 hours ago, BlizzardWx said:

It's really looking snowy here from Saturday-Wednesday or so. ECMWF with a 10-1 ratio had 10" at KSLC, and the ratio will probably be higher than that given the cold temperatures aloft. 

Nice. Please be generous and don't take it all before it crosses the Divide.

16 hours ago, snowfan789 said:

Basically hasn’t snowed in Denver in a month. Our multi-year, now nearly unprecedented snow drought continues. Any reason for hope would be appreciated. I have tried but can’t find any straws to grasp until February at the earliest.

Yeah, the landscape has mainly turned to dirt. Before long there won't be any vegetation to worry about. At least it won't burn. I expect a Mars rover to explore my yard any day now. I wonder how the dogs will react.

You're not kidding. The triangle of meh from Cheyenne to El Paso to Austin, more or less, is the only boring weather place in the next week.

Don't look now, but we've gone from a high of 60 to blizzard conditions for the past hour (1.5" snow, plenty of gusts to around 50 mph with sustained 25-30, visibility <1/4 mile). I imagine it will end soon but what a surprise!

Just fell on the black ice from our 0.03" or so and temp of 24. Thought I left that behind when we moved here.  Be careful Front Range folks.

Pretty well! SW Colorado is still lagging a bit (84% of normal) and they are the ones hardest hit by the drought, though they also are the area most favored to do well generally this winter. The whole Front Range is doing great, around 150% of normal to date. So we wait and see. Need to get into shape for ski season so I don't auto-dismember on my first run.

2 hours ago, finnster said:

 You would probably see some folks packing up and moving to warmer climes .

That would be fine with me.  Driving yesterday and this morning was almost hilarious with people going way too fast then crashing into everything.

A good 4" at my house, hard to tell because of melting midday yesterday. Most of the snow came after sunset last night. I think we do better on N flow at my place.

That would be a fun Halloween! So far, this fall reminds me almost exactly of last fall, except I didn't lose any tree limbs so far this fall due to snow. I hope this winter doesn't remind me of last winter.

Leaves around here are really, really pretty. Better than most years for some reason, though still nothing like New England. They'll either fall or help to break their own branches on Sunday. Lows are forecast in the low teens early Monday -wtf?? and I have not had my sprinklers blown out yet. And they can't come for a while. Grrr.....

Some wet snowflakes mixing with the rain here in the S Metro, 40 F. Radar shows oranges and a little red over the area, probably reflecting off these. Nice rain- steady for the moment!

On 9/24/2018 at 9:47 AM, finnster said:

I have to admit I'm an old die-hard that has lived in CO since the early 1960's.  Many people I talk to in CO these days prefer to have little if any snow.  I guess they haven't really learned where our water actually comes from . 

New Englander myself. Can't fathom why people would not like snow. They should have stayed in [fill in Southern or Southwestern state name here]. They complain when their tires spin. The rest of us just put on the snow tires. Easy.

Yeah, we got a sudden 0.5" from that line. A lot of it ran off because it was so heavy and fell in less than an hour. Need some less sudden rain. This morning, it's smoky and my eyes itch. No local fires I can see, must be from the Silver Creek fire and an overnight inversion.

It's now been 30 days since there was a day with 0.1" or greater at DEN; total rain over that period has been 0.17". Even for a cactus, that's dry. They say Florence is big; perhaps if it keeps growing it will help us.

Took a break from Florence to ponder a bit and realize that it's consistently in the low 90s this week here. Is DEN hotter than ABQ usually in September? So weird.  Seems like warm, dry and dark is becoming the fall norm. Well, it's always been dark.

I know- we had quite the time 1-4 AM with heavy rain that sounded like wind it was so heavy. Of course we're in a massive COCORAHS hole SE of town (I would join, but would be too unreliable due to time constraints). But pretty sure we had over an inch. The dog shook the whole bed having a nervous breakdown. I am tired today.

Hope so! NWS BOU keeps talking about it but it's always 36 hrs away.

Wow. Send some of that up here. 88 F today after 80 predicted. Getting real dry again. About 0.75" rain in the past month and a bit over an inch the month before that. I think that qualifies as a nonsoon. My water bill is stupid.