snowfan789

There are a lot of years that fell more than 10” short of average. So, the data indicates a heightened potential for more snow relative to normal after October.

Do you mean snow that’s relatively low in water content when you say drier than normal? Odds of an above average snowfall season are almost 75% based on historical data and Denver receiving over 10” in October. There are no guarantees, of course.

Well for October: https://www.weather5280.com/blog/2019/10/30/third-snowiest-october-for-stapleton-4th-boulder-5th-colorado-springs/

Forecasting seasonal snowfall in the CO Front Range other than during strong El Niño and La Niña winters (generally snowy and not snowy respectively) seems to be unusually difficult. What I understand to be your top analog years, Raindance, average out to slightly below average snowfall in Denver but those seasons individually ranged from quite bad to very good.

Thanks for explaining. Look forward to seeing your forecast. FWIW, some of those analog years you mentioned featured above average snowfall for Denver — 83-84 in particular. So one can still reasonably hope, for now...

What are the implications for the mountain west?

Happy for you. Seriously. We didn’t get nearly that much due west of Denver near Golden. More generally, what a horrible pattern since roughly early July onwards with a few exceptions. So hot and dry. Glad this isn’t winter as I’d take hot and dry now over any other time of the year. Still, not good for the flora (naturally occurring, don’t care about green lawns in this semi-arid climate) and hope this doesn’t persist.

It is snowing heavily through much of the Denver metro area. I’m starting to wonder if there will be power outages.

It was a good winter. The spring has been quite underwhelming for most of the CO mountains.

Ditto just west of Denver. Not much accumulation to speak of yet (.5” maybe) but it’s coming down harder than expected and, at the moment, subject to change, the radar looks encouraging. Some short term models like the HRRR are far less encouraging but don’t seem aligned with what’s actually happening.

Long range forecasts are signaling above average precip from around the end of March thru April in the West - especially Southwest. I don’t think the Winter fun is over yet in a fair amount of the relatively lower elevations (and definitely not in the mountains).

To your credit, your winter outlook stands out as notably accurate, especially here on this East Coast-dominated website, where a lot of people were calling for (yet another) big winter in the coastal areas of the East, generally at the expense of the West. More importantly, it is fantastic to see a big dent in the Four Corners drought, finally, though I fear that it’s temporary.

Just came across this - as of today, Colorado’s snowpack is in the 97th percentile compared to average. Wow. With a dry period coming up for the next week or so, this’ll go down some but, still, this snowfall season will go down as very good (or better) in the mountains regardless of the next few months. Also great is the equal opportunity nature of the snowfall. The San Juans finally have had a solid above average year. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/WCIS//basinCharts/POR/WTEQ/CO/STATE OF COLORADO.html

That was an impressive storm more for the wind than the snow around much of Denver, aside from the foothills, which picked up a surprising amount of snow (probably largely because they switched to snow much sooner than the lower elevations). Now attention shifts to late March and April. There are still decent signs pointing towards above average precip to end our wintery season. P.S. I’m surprised Cheyenne’s biggest storms aren’t bigger. Denver’s top storms are significantly more impressive.

Still a huge amount of uncertainty regarding how things shake out near Denver (especially west of town at the base of the foothills). I cannot recall another storm with such a wide range between boom and bust scenarios. Definitely interesting and fun for us weather nerds, if nothing else.

But the NAM looks better. So let’s go with that.

I generally think of (warming) chinook winds off the Rockies to be the enemy here near Denver but, wow, that’s an awfully long time.

Optimism hereby revoked. Not liking recent trends on the gfs for east of the Rockies. Sigh.

Good month for a lot of the West. In some cases, exceptionally good.

The very fact that I am saying this probably will jinx things, but I’m (as always, cautiously) optimistic for March in the Front Range. The upcoming pattern pretty consistently depicted by the GFS could be the best one so far this winter season, in terms of widespread moisture. The monthly CFS forecast issued today also shows a cold and moist March. It seems to have done okay lately once it’s close to the month it is forecasting and today, of course, is the last day of February. Now watch things start falling apart...

That’s not what I said. I said there’s some legitimate basis to be concerned about a trend towards dryness and bemoaned the dry past few winters just east of the Rockies. I cited to pretty thorough research showing that many parts of Southwest region are getting drier. That includes parts of CO.

Here’s more data: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dismal-western-snowpack-is-a-climate-warning-sign/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.weather5280.com/blog/2017/11/29/perspective-on-colorados-snowpack-is-there-a-downward-trend/amp/

Thanks for sharing. But, still, there’s reason to worry about the State of the Snowpack. Here’s one example of why I say this (there are plenty): https://www.summitdaily.com/news/snowpack-has-declined-by-an-average-of-41-percent-in-the-rocky-mountains-over-past-3-decades/

I think there’s some legitimate basis to be concerned about an overall trend towards dryness in at least the Southwest. Not sure if that includes places as far north as Denver. We’ll see, I guess. Less snowfall in the future seems nearly inevitable because of warming temps unless midwinter precip increases appreciably. And the last few years definitely have been rough in these parts. Historical Denver snowfall data is not great because stations have moved over time. Weather at DIA can be very different and often drier than points closer to the city, like the former reporting station at Stapleton.

I wonder if the northward shift of the jet (thanks to climate change) has something to do with it? Just a passing thought. It’s interesting to note that some places east of but still close to the Rockies that are north of Colorado have had good winters recently, like Billings, MT.