ValpoVike

On 6/17/2022 at 9:38 AM, ValpoVike said:

Wow, what an awesome lightning show last night.  It started around sunset with intense lightning visible from up here down around Loveland, and then a cell popped between Glen Haven and the Poudre Canyon that lit up the sky at least until midnight when I finally fell asleep.  I haven't had that much fun storm watching in a long time.

Radar estimates from NWS were 0.6" on the cell between GH and Poudre. This was over a drainage that was completely burned in CP, and last summer this amount of precip would have caused signicant flash flooding in my neighborhood. No impact at all from Friday's deluge, which is very good to see.  Perhaps last year's aerial seeding is proving to be of benefit for the Poudre and GH/Drake areas where they got hammered with FF's during monsoon last summer...and especially on the Poudre where there was loss of life from a burn scar runoff event.

Wow, what an awesome lightning show last night.  It started around sunset with intense lightning visible from up here down around Loveland, and then a cell popped between Glen Haven and the Poudre Canyon that lit up the sky at least until midnight when I finally fell asleep.  I haven't had that much fun storm watching in a long time.

Is that Cameron Pass?  All of the smoke, including smell, from Arizona yesterday had many up here on edge.  It was nothing of course, but indeed a good reminder to those up in the mountains that summer is here and to be careful.

In Germany on a work trip, but wife sent pics of snow!!??  What the heck...

7 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

This is by far the shortest loiter time I've ever seen on a major snowstorm.

 

Most of it is all melted already.

Crazy how fast it melts in May. A few years ago we received 44” on May 19th and by the end of the following day it was all gone and 75 degrees  

It is a challenge to estimate this snowfall, but I think we likely received 16”. Although the most depth that I measured was 9.5”.  Good accumulation Thursday overnight that melted…more on Friday that melted…and a very decent amount last night.  I think my 6500’ call was busted.

edit: my weather station logged 1.51” precip since Thursday.

I am around 5", but it has been holding there since about 8am.  It seems like the rate of snowfall is matching the rate of melting.

Does anyone have access to Euro Kuchera data?  It looks like GFS is around 12:1 ratio and I am interested in seeing what the Euro says.  I think 12:1 is quite generous.

Ha!  The NWS is doubling down on my 6500' call

Key Messages ➔ Red Flag Warning in effect today ➔ Significant heavy, wet snow Fri-Sat. ➔ Most confident in heavy wet snow above 6,500 ft elevation ➔ Much uncertainty remains for elevations below 6,500 ft in terms of snow accumulation

15 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

Hi watching with interest . What’s your elevation 

7300'

3 minutes ago, mayjawintastawm said:

Yes, at this point it looks kind of like there will be a sharp elevation line below which will get an inch or so of slush and above which might get a ton of wet snow. Will it be 6000'? Will it be 7000'? We're on the edge of our seats! Tune in Friday! 

I called 6500' in an earlier thread this week.  Sticking with it

I am watching Friday closely. I tend to get a bit excited when I see this kind of upslope scenario especially in May.  Up here we have had some huge May storms with this set up.  

I agree on the eclipse, it was spectacular.  I got a really great time lapse of it, but sadly the video file is much too large to post here. 

32 minutes ago, CO SciFan said:

We just finished planning a ton of stuff and I am not super excited about protecting it all from frost. Any odds for a late freeze for FOCO/Laporte at this point?  Seems like the models are still divergent, especially on 

I think it is unlikely. Probably not an issue until around 6500 ft. But anything can happen. 

10 hours ago, aggiegeog said:

We are in East Texas so too far to do anything but watch. Only one family decided to stay in our neighborhood up there. The fire is now within one creek drainage from our neighborhood. Sadly the neighborhood is fairly wooded so its going to make structure protection difficult. All structures are wood though many have metal roofs so that should help. With humidity levels and wind direction the fire will likely be in our drainage as early as today and good chance by Friday. Of greater concern of course is in the valleys where people live and work and not so much for our vacation homes. The fire will soon be in the towns of Chacon and Guadalapita. It will be pushing towards Angel Fire after that. Praying for the safety of residents and fire personnel, this has been a very hard month for them and there is no 

Two of our Firefighters from our small volunteer dept are down there working it as members of the Alpine Hotshots. Lots of good professionals all around I am sure. Unfortunately I think this is going to be all too common in the coming months across this sub forum.

4 hours ago, aggiegeog said:

The Hermit Peak Fire in NM is just 5 miles south of my family's place and winds turn southerly today. The fire has burned over 200,000 acres so far and has been burning for a month already. There are still two months until the monsoon hopefully kicks in. Hopefully winds calm down enough for firefighters to slow the spread and get the helicopters and planes in the air consistently before then.

 

https://nifc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=bfb95b09412840c0afd99626ea2bee4f

 

Sorry to hear this man.  I totally understand what you are going thru...been there.  A threatening wildfire is huge stress, but a long duration threat is a whole different level of stress.  I had Cameron Peak fire two years ago hang in the mountains to our west for 3 months before it roared down.  Thankfully it all worked out and no personal damage, but the stress of potentially losing a cherished home is intense...almost PTSD level.  Hang in there and know that there are a lot of very dedicated professionals doing all that they safely can.  

EDIT: Also the biggest thing your family can do (if you can still access the property) is to mitigate around the home.  Take out any trees near the house, cut down any grass, and remove plants from around the home.  Also, clear the immediate area around the home of anything that can burn (furniture, firewood, junk, etc).  This really made a difference in our neighborhood, where fire blackened all around many homes but they didn't burn due to successful mitigation.

I logged .44" overnight.  The interesting thing is that I missed the snow line somewhere between 100'-200'.  My neighbors above me had a decent coating this morning, while I had wet yard and deck.  I'll take the moisture any way I can get it though.  For the storm next week mentioned above, the plains amounts seem crazy high, but perhaps the amounts in the higher elevations are not too crazy.  The Euro has a similar look, albeit slightly lower in the mountains and a lot lower in the plains...especially along and south of the WY border.  Will be interesting to look at this again late in the week to see if it holds...we can get some impressive snows in early May, but temps are a real tricky thing.

A surprisingly good snow event ongoing up here. I didn't expect any accumulations at all today, but close to 3" over the past 1.5 hours. This is really good to see up here in the Larimer County foothills. 

Edit- at 6” now this is so good to see

My concern is growing for the summer wildfire season.  March/April are not panning out how we need it.  Let's hope for an increase late month, or a super good Monsoon...

You should read this morning's AFD.  Lot's of "extreme" mentions...disappeared this afternoon

April and early May can bring some big snow…

35 minutes ago, Chinook said:

It's too bad this larger upper level low will not bring a lot of precipitation to the West these days. There has been some rain in California, but otherwise only scattered rain and snow in the Mountain West region. My area will get rain showers tomorrow. For me, Saturday was upper 70s, and yesterday was only 59 or 60 degrees due to clouds. Today, there were upper 40's as of late morning, and then got to the upper 70's in the afternoon with the mixing of the afternoon. Now, there are kind of washed-out clouds at sunset, with no real sunset colors. I didn't get any pictures of lenticular clouds today, but maybe somebody posted some pics of UFO-shaped clouds on twitter somewhere.

The US drought monitor has been updated to category D0 and D1 in some parts of Colorado. 

 

 

and now we have a second fire, and I saw that smoke this afternoon

I am in N California this week at Redwoods NP. Some rain but not as much as I expected to see. That fire was pretty close to my home. Sad to see so many wildfires over the past few days. 

8 minutes ago, Chinook said:

there have been reports of 5" at Federal Heights/Northglenn and 6" at Littleton, 10" Parker, 7.3" at DIA

I landed at 11am at DIA, and my Jeep had more snow on it than it has had all year long.  Was great to see, and the best part was that the roads were only wet.

Joy, another 3" snow up here from this last "storm".  I wish I had been adding this up but have been too busy.  Literally every single snow has been in the 3" range for the past couple of months.  I wouldn't be surprised if I have racked up 24" or so in these series of events.  We are heading into big dump season, so hopefully this changes thru April.

It looks to be a pretty healthy series of storms over the next 7 days, right on queue for March.  The longer range seems rather bullish as well, and it looks like the trend is there...thankfully.