ValpoVike

As of this morning I am sitting at 15.59" for the year. The closest climo data to me is Estes Park which shows around 14" annual average precip. Not too bad...but we did have a good monsoon up here this year, followed by a very dry fall. It is remarkable just how different a situation it is just a few miles to the east.

Yesterday my home was a frustrating 200' below the snow line. This morning we awoke to a surprise 1.5". We are calling it the meteorological miracle

Something really strange is in the air today. There are tiny moist particles falling from the sky...I actually had to turn on my windshield wipers to push it aside.

That's really quite interesting. Up here in the Larimer foothills, there seems to be a real lack of climatological data however my experience over the past 8 years is that mid to late January is typically the coldest. This is very similar to what I experienced in my years of living in Ohio and Indiana. I wonder if there is something inherently different (altitude, LOL) in the short distance between Loveland and 7k+ feet up...or if the past 8 years have generally been anomalous up here. Not the first or last time that I wish there was good climate data up here.

LOL I spoke too soon and clocked 87MPH at 3:25pm. There is a nice Davis station a bit further up in the neighborhood that hit 93MPH around the same time. Pretty intense.

I recorded a 68MPH gust up here at 11:08am. So far (and thankfully) a rather run of the mill winter wind event up in this part of the foothills. I think it is perhaps a bit different story from Boulder and points south, like Bailey and Evergreen areas. It would be interesting to see more reports from down in that area.

About an inch up here so far this evening. It's crazy to be excited about that, but here we are.

Yep, Hwy 34 on my drive up to Glen Haven. I saw those records on a Facebook post and it is shocking.

Off topic, but what a sunset this evening along the front range. I captured this photo on my way back home from the airport today. After 7 long days away, the mountains were a welcome sight.

Tonight a weak mountain wave has developed overhead and has been reforming continuously. The full moon makes it an even more amazing sight.

Or super overcooked right up to the final days....like what it did last spring in the 90"+ storm for the Front Range that turned out to be 2'-3'.

I'll believe there may be a storm if it still shows early next week, but the GFS is overboard usually...especially at this range. I wouldn't take any of it verbatim.

It was a mixed blessing. We had 13 flash flood warnings during the Monsoon season, due to the burn scars. Are you up near Horsetooth?

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Cameron Peak making it's final big run (and the start of my 3 week evacuation), as well as the start of the East Troublesome fire. What a difference a year makes. We actually had a decent monsoon up here this year, which was very fortunate as we were trending the same direction as last year before it kicked in.

We had 20 minutes of heavy snow and lots of lightning up here this evening. Love these October squall like conditions.

Just a few more days of color to go up here, but I did capture this yesterday looking down from my deck to the North Fork of the Big Thompson.

GFS is starting to show something way out at +384, which is a few days later...around the 22nd, with highest impact for NM. It will be interesting to watch this one as we move out of fantasy land.

I sure do enjoy reading your posts in the fall/winter/spring. You know it's definitely time to start that winter thread when Raindance is talking about Kamchatka.

Yeah, get that winter thread going. I actually had to fire up the heater this afternoon. Up here, sitting at a balmy 42 degrees and socked into the cloud deck with very limited visibility. It feels November'ish...

Not sure that one has much chance. Sam will leave a pretty good cold pool in it's wake, and even so it's recurve will allow anything that forms from that wave to rotate up and around the ridge. I think Sam is it for CV threats this year, imho.

The mountains have already had snow this year (a couple of weeks ago). For my area, ~Estes Park and Larimer county above 7k', I will predict Oct 7th. This is a very average date for us over the past few years. Last year was a very notable exception on Labor Day.

It looks like yesterday was good for a lot of areas. The hail scenes on the news were a bit interesting...fortunately it appeared to be mostly small hail but it did accumulate nicely.

Well, quite ironically....Phillips County in the far NE plains received up to 9" of rain last night.

I was just thinking last weekend that we have largely escaped large hail events this season. Sounds like that was a bit premature.

That sort of rainfall can indeed happen in Colorado, but with devastating effects. The 1976 Big Thompson flood is quite the example. From Wiki: On July 31, 1976, during the celebration of Colorado's centennial, the Big Thompson Canyon was the site of a devastating flash flood that swept down the steep and narrow canyon, claiming the lives of 143 people, 5 of whom were never found. This flood was triggered by a nearly stationary thunderstorm near the upper section of the canyon that dumped 300 millimeters (12 inches) of rain in less than 4 hours (more than 3/4 of the average annual rainfall for the area). Little rain fell over the lower section of the canyon, where many of the victims were. Around 9 p.m., a wall of water more than 6 meters (20 ft) high raced down the canyon at about 6 m/s (14 mph), destroying 400 cars, 418 houses and 52 businesses and washing out most of U.S. Route 34.[6] This flood was more than 4 times as strong as any in the 112-year record available in 1976, with a discharge of 1,000 cubic meters per second (35,000 ft³/s).