Chinook Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 We are starting a new Mountain West thread for now through Nov. 30th. The old thread had 600 posts. It's a cold start to March! 10 degrees with 2" of snow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 3, 2014 Author Share Posted March 3, 2014 In the previous thread, I posted "That brings me up to 36.2" for the season." I think I have had 0.5", 2", and 2" since then making it 40.7" for the season. Cheyenne is up in the 60-65 inch range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 4, 2014 Author Share Posted March 4, 2014 warm weather in the Plains with a chance of 3-8" of thundersnow for the mountains?? That doesn't sound very warm. I wonder if some convective snow will come in before 10PM here. GFS 24-hour precip totals. Perhaps the GFS thinks it will be rain. I don't think rain could happen for very long with a 700mb temp of -5C tonight. It will become snow pretty quickly. GFS temps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Nice to have a new thread! Would be interesting to look at the old one as an archive of the past year. Anyway, it was 60 today, which means it will definitely snow in the next 24 hours. That rule has worked at least 4 times already this winter. And Thursday, 60+ is predicted again. Which means.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 It rained here. We had just a few snowflakes mixed in. I think the snow level was 6000ft. We had black ice because the rain froze. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ConiferMtnMan Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Had about 2.5" on the ground this morning in my area just north of Parker. No rain, started as a 38 degree snow and cooled off from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Interesting, Chinook. Usually FoCo is colder! We had 2.6" in Greenwood Village preceded by 10-15 minutes of light rain. Low was 28 F. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 7, 2014 Author Share Posted March 7, 2014 we switched from rain to heavy snow. we have big wet flakes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Tornado season must have started. Saturday I was out walking the dog, and in a sunny cul-de-sac near our house where the snow had just finished melting (so wet road), there was a slowly rotating column of mist about a foot wide and about 25 feet high, so translucent that I couldn't even get a picture of it. Lasted about 2-3 minutes and did not move. Never saw anything quite like it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 10, 2014 Author Share Posted March 10, 2014 Previously, I thought that Tuesday (tomorrow) we would get some heavier snow in the mountains. Now, I think this storm looks kind of weak. Perhaps it will be really weak for Fort Collins, as we will get a 20mph downslope wind from Cheyenne tomorrow. Yesterday, march 9th, was our first 70-degree day. We had 73 degrees with briefly an RH of 3%. That's nearly the lowest RH I've experienced. (FNL airport had 73/18 which is 12% RH). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 We just started getting a few flakes and now some light snow, even though the radar shows some higher reflectivity(like a heavy snow event). We have some gusts in the 30-35mph range here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 Posted April 3rd: 20" of snow reported at Black Hawk. 13" at Nederland, 8" at Golden. Here in Ft. Collins, we got about 0.08" of rain and a trace of snow (hardly able to find the snow.) Denver Snow reports Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 Colorado Heavy Snow Events 1979-2013 I created a heavy snow event archive for Colorado. I put in links to several of the storms to the NARR reanalysis on the Penn State web page. http://www.greatlakes.salsite.com/Heavy_snow_events_Colorado.html In 1979-1980, I believe Fort Collins got 114" of snow, which is the seasonal snowfall record for Fort Collins. Now, with this web page, we can look up the snow reports from all of the individual events, and have quick links to the NARR Reanalysis to get the synoptic maps. In January 1980, Cheyenne WY got 35.5" of snow. Fort Collins must have been similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 Posted April 2nd: HRRR and RAP showing rain/snow north of Denver late tonight. The NAM focuses in on the rain/snow band from central CO and Denver, up to the northeast, missing Larimer County, later tonight and tomorrow morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 posted March 29th: looks like quite a bit of snow will come to the western mountains this week, as well as the northern plains. I think the Front Range has a chance of snow this week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 9, 2014 Author Share Posted April 9, 2014 It was actually 63 with a dew point of 17 after midnight last night. Today, we should have the warmest day of the year. The GFS is finally catching on to some snowfall in the mountains on Sunday. Maybe we will get more than a trace of snow here. Today's GFS is showing over 1.0" of QPF for southern Wyoming this weekend (in 48 hours.) That could be a lot of rain or snow. We actually need some rain or snow at this point in the season. We have been kind of dry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 lenticular clouds yesterday. I adjusted the contrast of this image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 The ECMWF forecasts about 0.75" for Fort Collins on Saturday and Sunday. The GFS is a little lower, though, with about 0.4". I think this will be a rain to snow transition. After reading the NWS forecast discussion, they don't know exactly when a rain-snow transition will occur in the low elevations. The GFS shows a 4-corners shortwave on Wednesday. This might be worthy of our attention at some point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 NWS has categorical snow (80% PoP) for my area on Sunday. First time I can remember snow that certain 72 hours out since we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. ECMWF has around 8 inches for me, though somehow I would be flabbergasted if that verifies. Should be interesting! And a 4 corners low on Wed? Bring it on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 I am sure you won't be throwing a party for having an 80% chance of snow, vs. a 60% chance of snow. In my mind, either precipitation happens or it doesn't! wellz, here's the 6z GFS for 168 hours. It has 33 degree temps near Denver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 updated GFS snowfall for this weekend Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 Just changed to snow at 9 AM, 33.3 and dropping slowly. Light wet snow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 13, 2014 Author Share Posted April 13, 2014 We have very wet snow. We have a lot of aggregated snowflakes right now. Some elveated surfaces have an inch of slush or more. But it is having a hard time buildng up on the ground and roads. So I don't have much to say as far as accumulation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 Today was very meh except for temps. 20 F now, blowing around pretty good. 3" but most of that is fluff over the last 3-4 hrs. Roads have 1-2 slick spots but generally fine. Lucky if we got 0.2" WE from the whole thing... APA, DIA and Buckley are all <0.25". But hey, it does feel good. Still need a good drenching to jump start the lawn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 14, 2014 Author Share Posted April 14, 2014 we got 0.55" of liquid equivalent and 3.2" for the day. The snow was barely above the grass though. I think some of that 0.55" was rain- maybe 0.1" of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 14, 2014 Author Share Posted April 14, 2014 Models are now showing some snow for southeast Colorado plains and the mountains on Wednesday-Thursday. Southeast Colorado could definitely use some water! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 No posts in almost 10 days, thought I'd freshen this up. Nice surprise thunderstorm this evening, nothing real heavy but about 3 hours of real nice rain- pushing 0.4" now. Best rain in 7 months! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 24, 2014 Author Share Posted April 24, 2014 Yes, not much has happened. Sluggerwx posted last night on the April 23 severe weather thread (about Denver), but I didn't have much of an interesting reply. It also looks like relatively few rain showers will happen with this upcoming storm system. I was hoping for heavy rain, just because we would like to have at least 2" of precip in April. I think we have 0.6" for the month, mostly due to the Sunday when it snowed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 25, 2014 Author Share Posted April 25, 2014 The western mountains, most notably the Sierra Nevada, could load up on some spring snowfall this weekend. 120hr snow totals from the GFS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted April 25, 2014 Author Share Posted April 25, 2014 The NAM is now forecasting a 50kt wind at about 2000ft above ground on Sunday. I think this could mean that my place could see some gusts to 50mph Sunday! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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