ValpoVike

A watch has been hoisted for the foothills and mountains mostly east of the Divide for Wednesday a.m. thru Thursday night.

WHAT...Heavy snow possible. Total snow accumulations between 1 to
  2 feet, with isolated totals up to 3 feet possible. Winds could
  gust as high as 35 mph.

22 hours ago, Chinook said:

I wonder how much snow is just under the trees, just beyond the meadow.

In the protected areas of rmnp at that elevation, likely between 30-36”.  Around 9500’ there is a 50” snowpack. The park above 9k’ is seeing a very normal snowpack, right at 100% of seasonal average. 

The Euro and GFS are both showing a good storm for the second half of next week for the foothills with the Euro QPF coming in at 1.5"+ and the GFS is bonkers with widespread 3"+ totals.  It would be right on time for our big March events, so fingers crossed.

A beautiful snow up here, with large flake size. I am already at 3”.  My hopes are high!

Spot on with the 7k’ typical cutoff. I am at 7300’ and every spring I do get some respectable dumps, but also have 1 or 2 times where my neighbors 200’ above me get all snow, while I get a mushy mostly rain mix. It is always fascinating the gradients in these spring like storms. 

22 minutes ago, GansettBay said:

Thanks for the warm welcome! And for breaking that down for me. I moved here from RI so I'm not stranger to rain in February, but I've been waiting for the big one since I've been out here and this seemed promising early on. Overall, it seems like models generally struggle a bit more in our region and it seems to be tough to nail down a confident forecast here outside of 48 hours. I don't do any forecasting myself, but that seems to be the case for a lot of the mets I follow on Twitter and whatnot. 

Patience is key.  We get our big dumps in March and April.  I am up near Estes and one of the biggest I have seen was in mid-May.

5 hours ago, mayjawintastawm said:

Welcome! Basically since there isn't as much measurement in the middle of the Pacific, it's harder to tell the fine details of upstream weather that feeds into the prediction models. But Chinook is a real met and could be more specific.

At least around here we don't have to worry as much about rain/snow lines with winter storms... except maybe for this one. Might be a Spring-like elevation storm. My biggest take-home message about winter storms since moving from central MA in 2010 is that QPF can magically go "poof" and vanish at the last minute. Dryness is a bigger enemy than marine warmth. Then, of course, you get things like the storm last May that dumped 6 inches of rain in 30 hours at my house.

I agree that it definitely has a March spring feel to this storm.  Lot's of GOM moisture, but really sharp gradients...and heck why not, this week certainly feels like late March anyways.

7 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Both the Euro and GFS seeing something next weekend.

I just saw that too.  The Euro in particular has some crazy accumulations. 

It looks like there may be a strong inversion in place or something. Looking at Davis Weathernet, my station is at -17, a nearby neighbors station is -18, but stations 5 miles away in Estes and a couple hundred feet higher are in the +teens.  That’s a huge difference. 

Merry Christmas to y’all and here’s to hoping that some of us have a little snow cover this weekend. On a personal note, FedEx dropped off a heavy box yesterday addressed to my wife. I couldn’t help but notice that the sender was Davis Instruments. I have the best wife ever   

19 hours ago, mayjawintastawm said:

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

That is par for the course in many storms.  Often either southern/central Boulder foothills and Larimer foothills will get widely divergent snow totals. 

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

11 hours ago, Chinook said:

Winter storm warning for most of Larimer and Boulder Counties now, also note this was issued this afternoon, as you see this winter storm warning existed while it was 66-67 degrees

 

This is looking to be a narrow event for the front range… Boulder-Longmont-FoCo.  I got my hopes up yesterday for 10-12” up here but that has been reduced significantly.  Interestingly, this is pretty much what the GFS has been showing for many days now, with most QPF in a narrow stripe at the base of the foothills.  Happy Thanksgiving!

45 minutes ago, Newman said:

Not sure exactly how much Estes Park got, but we lost power this morning at the cabin we're staying at for a few hours. Probably 8-10" range total. Had like 3-4" yesterday and 5-7" overnight

11.5” here, about 5 miles north of town. Yeah power is out in the entire EP Valley. This is the 2nd time for the transmission lines running down to Loveland have failed over the past year. They are slowly bringing power back on line thru a backup source running thru the Alva tunnel that goes thru the divide west. So it will be back soon. 

Several lightning strikes in a band just NW of Lake George. 

49 minutes ago, Newman said:

I'll be in Estes Park for the weekend, NWS calling for 6-8 which sounds reasonable. Probably won't be going up into RMNP sadly. Denver looking like 8-12

Grab some microspikes and hike Gem Lake. You won’t have to drive the park but you can still get a hike in. Will be pretty cold though…

Saturday thru Sunday look interesting up here.  GFS and ECMWF both showing some decent snow, around 6"-9".  Trying not to get my hopes up, but cautiously optimistic as models seem to be generally aligned.

I got a deck dusting overnight. Technically, first snow of the fall. 

7 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

This widespread heavy rain event predicted looks to be a gigantic bust.

I’ll take it. Light but steady rain all day so far. Our area in Larimer county just can’t take a heavy rain event after so many this summer. 

Woke up around 2’ish this morning to the sound of boulders crashing down the Miller Fork. Fortunately I live 300’ above the streams but many got flood damage. 
 

9 hours ago, Chinook said:

 

You should try to watch a loop of the activity in Larimer county during the Ft Collins rain event. The dynamics and storm motions were interesting. 

I am having concerns about heavy rain should storms fire as predicted today.  My home weather station is showing a current dewpoint of 60, which is very unusual for my location.  

Lookie at what happened today. 

Estes Park fireworks got postponed to July 15. Not sure about other communities. 

Dang, summer made it finally!