mayjawintastawm

9 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

I spent many a year on the mid-Atlantic forum trying to predict where that rain/snow line would end up.  

I'm sort of glad I don't have to keep redefining "northern and western suburbs", though it would be nice to have something, anything, to talk about.

1 hour ago, smokeybandit said:

Looks like next week could be interesting for NE CO.

If this were the New England forum we'd already be wringing our hands about whether we'd get 0.5 or 4 or 15 inches of snow. (in fact, they are.)

Snowfall season to date: October 8.0", November 1.5", December 7.4" (surprise!), total 16.9". So an average start to what feels like a really dry season to date so far.

On 12/29/2023 at 7:18 PM, Chinook said:

last year on 12/21/2022.  Last year had a cold air mass that has not yet existed this winter. Were you ready for the drop to -9 degrees and snowing? Wind chill was -28 at Cheyenne and Denver for the evening hours on 12/22/2022.

That was the storm that saved Christmas week for the I-70 ski areas. This year, not so much. Lots of dead batteries the morning of 12/22.

Even the NWS BOU forecasters are looking at hour 240 on the models. Yawn. Skied yesterday at Loveland with the lowest % open by this point in the season in my 14 Decembers here. Beats working, but we could really use a couple storms.

We had snow for a lot of hours just north of APA, but it amounted to 3.8" total over the 24 hours or so that it snowed (3.4" in the first 6 hours). We were on the edge of heavier stuff.

Missed it by that much...

1.4" at my house, total December snow 3.6" (that may be it for the month)

Another non-event. Precip since I installed my new PWS on 9/15 is 0.84 inches, which correlates very well with the two official stations around here. Last year, Cherry Creek Reservoir was completely frozen over by now; this year, not a trace of ice.

18 minutes ago, Powerball said:

Yes.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-out-tornado-alley-is-migrating-eastward/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0048-2

Thanks. That describes the spatial changes but not as much the late Fall trend. Maybe not enough tornadoes to show up as a signal with STP or numbers of reports of strong tornadoes, but it sure seems different.

It seems like the period between 11/20 and 12/15 has become particularly scary for TN and NC the last 20-30 years in terms of nighttime strong tornadoes. Do we have data to back that up? I remember driving from RDU to western NC for school a little before the turn of the millennium late at night right after Thanksgiving, and encountering some really scary weather. The pattern seems to have continued.

On 12/9/2023 at 10:58 AM, ValpoVike said:

Ended up with 3.5”.  Not a lot, but most of it came in a two hour burst last evening. 

We got 1.4", same deal. Surprised you didn't get more- the west side of Boulder and Genesee did well.

19 hours ago, Chinook said:

this what I posted on Great Lakes/Ohio Valley a couple of days ago. It's after I was explaining how I made a snowball in June 2022 at Cameron Pass before I left.

 

I've made a snowball in every calendar month in CO. I think Loveland Pass (11992') is the windiest place I've ever been in a car, and I've been through a couple of low-end hurricanes. Is K0CO what you see uphill from Berthoud Pass on the ridge, on the right as you're driving north (toward Winter Park)? That's at least 500 feet above the pass itself.

54 minutes ago, Chinook said:

It looks like it was in the 50's to even the 70's on the mid to northern plains.

Yup, 68.5 F for a high here in south metro Denver. This time of year, that can only mean a steep temp drop and chance for snow within 48 hrs.

A quick and pleasant surprise of 0.7" this AM, enough to get the dogs excited. Gone by 3 PM, in time for a chilly bike ride. Not a bad day.

Finished November with a paltry 1.5" of snow and 0.17" total moisture. I wonder if Albuquerque or Denver will have more snow this season.

NWS BOU AFD this morning is really interesting- the long term section by someone named Rodriguez is particularly well written, though of course I don't understand all of it. Nothing earth shaking, just a really nice explanation that you don't often see.

On 11/5/2023 at 4:53 PM, Chinook said:

Today, temperatures in Colorado are like summer, but sunset at Fort Collins is at 4:52PM, considering the calculation expects a completely flat landscape. Here at my place in Ohio, sunset is at 5:23 Eastern. That feels different, as the solar noon time is pretty much a half hour later at all times. I think it's almost completely based off how the longitude lines up with your time zone. Keep checking the models for a light snow event later this week.

 

A while back when I was bored on a long drive between CO and OH (my daughter went to college near Cincinnati) it occurred to me that most time zones line up with longitude lines that are multiples of 15 degrees (duh, there are 24 time zones and GMT is aligned with 0). So Denver is about average for the Mountain Time zone at 105 degrees W, but Cincinnati is way west for the Eastern time zone at 84.5 W. Indiana is even stranger.

10 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

It got down to 4 degrees this morning, which interestingly isn't even the coldest Oct 30 in recent memory. Oct 30, 2019, it got down to -1.

8 here this AM. Amazing how the first snow of the year can pull down Arctic air to rival midwinter temps.

Had 8" on the nose here. Darn good forecasting for a very tricky situation!

19 hours ago, Chinook said:

I was going to try to discuss the upcoming pattern change, but I have some problems. The  GFS ensembles and ECMWF ensembles don't even really agree as to the overall pattern at 6-7 days. ECMWF does not drop the freezing air into northern Colorado on Oct 26.

When in doubt, seems like we go with persistence... not putting the shorts away or the snow tires on anytime soon. Our neighbors have a resurgence of ripe tomatoes.

17 hours ago, Chinook said:

Hey Mayja, remember this 2021 dual-metro snowstorm? It somehow failed to drop heavier snows over the Palmer Divide but successfully dropped over 6" at Colorado Springs.

 

We got just under a foot with that one, though SWE was vanishingly small. A couple weeks later we got a solid 22 inches. That was a good period in there, I think we got somewhere around 45" from mid-Feb to mid-March.

6 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

Solar radiation data from my weather station.   Pretty obvious where the eclipse is, with some clouds here and there messing with the pretty curve.

 

I have a new station and need to figure out how to look at those data. Nice! Where I was (probably 10-12 miles from you), there were also some patchy clouds until about 10:15 which probably messed things up a bit, but after that time skies were clear till the end of the eclipse.

Most of us have now seen our first freeze of the season, and mountaintops are white for the foreseeable future (we hope!) Leaves are starting to look good in the Denver Metro, about a week behind schedule. The eclipse was very cool yesterday, though I couldn't get any pics that are good. Supposed to be 80 in Denver midweek. El Nino, what bring you?

Dare we end this thread to create a cold season thread? I know, I just committed us to 3 months of +4 average temps and bone-dryness. What the heck.

19 hours ago, Chinook said:

Summertime temps of 81-82 at Denver, 85 at Salt Lake City, Wyoming, and even Montana, with the mountains getting also summertime values with no clouds.

Remarkable for the end of Sept to see the mountains snow-free from a distance. Still mowing parts of the lawn (the shady ones) with some regularity. The few tomatoes we have are not in danger with no temps <40 F yet.