skierinvermont

Time for a walk!

just south of the good stuff here but at least starting to see stuff build up near the foothills on radar

oh pretty sure you'll see 2' outside shot at 3 still

I noticed that too.. and almost all that qpf was after 03z.

haha right, gaping hole. good thing things seem to be moving quickly still

same (3.75 20 min ago)

3" here, radar looks to be filling in finally

the mean looks to be about 18" for the metro a little more west a little less east (adding the h24 and h48 totals). around 32" on the mean for Estes, with 47" for the max. more in the higher terrain N and E of Estes really slams just NW of Fort Collins and up into WY. up to 60" on the mean for the high terrain in WY. 80" on the max. also 80" max 55" mean near Cameron pass west of Fort Collins

almost .5" on the patio table not sticking to the sidewalks at all yet. getting some heavier bursts and then back to a snow rate that is maybe in equilibrium with the melting. gradually getting whiter though. looks like Longmont to FOCO is a little more consistent right now

The 00z was a solid .5" more qpf for the whole metro with 2.8" downtown. But the 00z was the most juiced run so far so not surprising to see it tone it back a bit. The mid-level positioning of the low was the same or even a hair south so that was good.

sticking to the grass at 5790' here

I mean who knows if it will bump as much as the OP's 40%, but the ridging north of the storm was stronger than 12z beginning from initialization. That ridging has been coming in stronger than modeled on the whole 18z and 00z suite.. pretty much all the models showed this to some extent. That's shunting the mid-level dynamics south and tightening the gradient. So I'd expect some kind of bump.

yeah awesome bump right before the storm after holding solid at 1.8-2.2 for most runs for several days

Euro 10:1 maps upped Denver from 19.4" to 26.5"... so 24" with 9:1 ratios solid 25-50 mile south shift one more shift like that and the meet of it would be slamming into the northern foothills

v15 on the right with all the surface wind

I do notice the v15 has a lot more surface wind, blowing in the warm air, scouring out the surface cold, and then since there's no resistance until the moisture has to rise over the foothills we get the extreme qpf over the foothills instead of I25

maybe the GFS has less cold air damming against the foothills? would also explain the lower QPF farther east. I remember the cold air damming 38" storm in Burlington Jan 2010. Cold air damming was so extreme the mountains barely got snow.

yeah i was looking more up north east of FOCO. I see yeah not much down by you and warm

People east of I25 will like the new GFS. really fills it in like the other models

In my 6ish years here I think the most I've seen is around 18" and that was probably the only one above 15". Hoping this has the noreaster feel with long duration heavy snow. I think there are a couple reasons this thread isn't as lively as a MA thread 1) This was originally an east coast only forum 2) There are ballpark 80 million people from NC to ME or 60 million from DC to Boston compared to maybe 3 million from Pueblo to Cheyenne east of the divide. In the same distance (200 miles) from DC to NY there are close to 50 million people. The population density in the east is over 10x. 3) Snow is more frequent here and also the terrain means usually snow is more isolated rather than tracking a single storm that will affect 60+ million.

Yeah it was a solid shift south from 18z.. starting to look more similar to the globals' mid-levels. no longer stupidly taking the 500mb low over denver

When will you be driving to Estes? I think the earliest they would close is sometime mid-morning. More likely they don't close until sometime tomorrow evening or night when the Euro shows a second wave of heavy precip moving in. CO can handle snow, it's just the 40" that overwhelms the roads.

Boulder went from 2.6" to 5" qpf from 12z to 18z gfs... lol... a little erratic to be doubling qpf right before the storm 18z

yeah generally it seemed to tack on an extra .1-.2" from Colorado Springs to FOCO due to the slight shift south at the mid-levels less in northern WY and SD

Euro shifted south 25 miles. One more shift like that and we will be getting back closer to the 3" amounts near boulder