Chinook Posted March 4, 2016 Author Share Posted March 4, 2016 Hope so. Anybody notice just how incredibly dry it's been lately? DEN has had no measurable precip in 31 days and Centennial only 0.01". Spring will start out like a rock if we don't get something soon. I think it is reasonable to expect 0.01" to 0.40" rain on Monday afternoon/night. Looks like it will be quick in and out. I think I will go crazy if my area gets a few hundredths of an inch of precip this month. This should be the snowiest month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 I've been known to repeat myself, also be redundant from time to time. Looks like Spring weather here does too. I do think it will be better than my horrible 2012 predictions. Let's see what came to pass in Spring 2012 at DEN: March 0.03" total April 1.39" with 0.43" on 4/3 and 4/26/12 May 1.01" with 0.60" on 5/23/12... so I was close on the 0.5" but way too pessimistic on the others. Still only 1.0" snow through that whole period, all on 4/3/12. I'd take the April and May but sure hope this March is better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercurial Posted March 5, 2016 Share Posted March 5, 2016 Operational GFS looks pretty good starting around day 10 or so... lol well it's something i guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Clear skies this morning and mild. So much for this one. Looking like March 2012... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 7, 2016 Author Share Posted March 7, 2016 Clear skies this morning and mild. So much for this one. Looking like March 2012... Don't say that. In March 2012, I never saw precipitation fall out of the sky. Fort Collins recorded a trace of snow for the month. It was the driest calendar month in my own personal history. Also note I lived east of the Mississippi River for most of my life, so a bone-dry 30-day period was impossible. Today I am seeing the rain (or snow) shower elements track northwestward near Cheyenne, southeastward near Denver. No rain going on here now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercurial Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Counting down the days to June at this point. So excited for the opening of the Going to the Sun road in a few months. March and April are kind of an outdoorsman's deadzone around here -- too warm to ski (this winter at least), yet too cold to do anything else. Fortunately the mountain snowpack situation isn't that bad, so hopefully the forest fire and fishing conditions this summer won't be too awful either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 I was amazed to see a good hour of moderate snow just 5 hours after it was clear and 53 at my house. Couldn't really measure it but might have been an inch. Still covers the ground in sheltered spots. 0.17" W.E. at APA from what seemed to be a mesoscale thing on radar in the south Metro area. Looked almost convective. Go figure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Birds singing before dawn, meadowlarks and bald eagles back and grass getting green. Haven't seen pelicans back yet but probably won't be long. All about a month ahead of schedule. Wow. Ridgezilla is getting ready to declare victory, though we may be lucky to get one last gasp next week. Probably need a spring thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Winter may come back on St. Patty's Day, the 18th, or 19th. The 12z ECMWF and Canadian predict snow for us on March 18th. Ensemble means show that we will be colder than average at that time. I don't have a lot of confidence in any one prediction of snow at this point. The models have shown a lot of different 500mb patterns beyond 168 hours, I have no idea what to believe. I have been watching the GFS for several days now, and the snow is always 10 days away. In this case, snow may be less than 10 days away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 So if we lived 10 days in the future we'd be buried in snow 7 months a year and have severe weather the rest of the time. Gotta love the GFS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 13, 2016 Author Share Posted March 13, 2016 Now the 00z GFS is predicting the big snowstorm for us, starting 00z Friday, i.e, St. Patrick's Day. It's finally catching the same shortwave depiction that the ECMWF had on the 12z and 00z earlier today, both of which predicted snow for us. (00z ECMWF tonight is not done yet) Now just watch, it will all disappear in a couple of days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 We should see some healthy snows in the northern Rockies even before the end-of-the-week storm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 Models are getting somewhat more consistent with the snow next week. Now the GFS has a 500mb shortwave tracking from E Idaho to the Front Range on Thu/Fri and predicts heavy snow amounts for Denver. There are very cold temps; 25 deg in the daytime would certainly be a shock! (the 00z GFS has 22deg near Denver at noon on Friday) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 12z GFS now says a non-event precip-wise. Cold though. Have to tell the trees to hold on a couple more weeks. I hope this isn't like last April's freeze which basically prevented a single apple from forming on our backyard tree. Would be great to get any significant moisture. I'm thinking we may get more from hail than from rain or snow this Spring. Don't like that kind of moisture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 Wow, 00Z even worse thru 120 hrs. And 12z has us at 0.05" through 10 days. In this super-wet (yeah right) Super-El Nino year, we could conceivably wind up with the #2 all time driest March. 2012 was #1 with 0.03", and #2 was 0.11". So far we are at 0.01" (DEN). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 Sometimes it seems like the Nino 3.4 SSTA data is a lagging indicator for what weather pattern we're really in - in some ways it seems like the La Nina is already here, although in other ways it's really just the ridge of death over the West. We were dry here in 1953-54, and 1951-52 and not particularly wet in 1957-58 either. El Nino or not, have to say it'll be impressive if ABQ records it's 9th drier than average March in a row. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 15, 2016 Author Share Posted March 15, 2016 Wow, 00Z even worse thru 120 hrs. And 12z has us at 0.05" through 10 days. In this super-wet (yeah right) Super-El Nino year, we could conceivably wind up with the #2 all time driest March. 2012 was #1 with 0.03", and #2 was 0.11". So far we are at 0.01" (DEN). In an odd turn of events, the 00z GFS and NAM tonight predict some heavy snow for Larimer County and not Denver! Last night's 00z GFS had 0.86 liquid equivalent for Denver and less QPF for my house. And you are right, the 12z GFS had pretty low QPF for the urban corridor so that is kind of a bad sign. Things are not really set in stone yet. It is getting into the NAM's range. Anyway, the northern mountains probably will have gotten 6-12" above 10000ft by tomorrow morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 15, 2016 Author Share Posted March 15, 2016 oooh 6-12" in Fort Collins and Cheyenne. I think that 0.9" is near your house Mayjawintastawm. 18z GFS also likes Laramie to Cheyenne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 16, 2016 Share Posted March 16, 2016 Call me Eeyore. Oh well, the snow gods never liked me anyway. Good for you all up north, you've been shortchanged a lot this winter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ConiferMtnMan Posted March 17, 2016 Share Posted March 17, 2016 Call me Eeyore. Oh well, the snow gods never liked me anyway. Good for you all up north, you've been shortchanged a lot this winter. FWIW, the 6Z NAM looks decent south of Denver. Bullseye is still up north, but I'll take what I can get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 17, 2016 Share Posted March 17, 2016 Hm, this is looking better. Bite in the air this AM and it ain't really warming up. Wonder where the band (s) will set up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 17, 2016 Author Share Posted March 17, 2016 I've got 33 degrees and some nice flakes right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 17, 2016 Author Share Posted March 17, 2016 Visibility down to 1 mi. I can't see the mountain. Under normal circumstances this would be 1/4" to 1/2" per hour, but it is just turning into puddles right now. My county has a WSW for 5-10" (low elevation) and 6-14" (high elevation) with WWA in Greeley, Boulder, Denver metro for 3-6" Now the Euro and GFS have some snow on the 23rd-24th (Wed-Thu). The Euro runs have the 500mb shortwave near Las Vegas, with temps below freezing here during that time frame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 In my area there is 1/2" to 1" of snow on the grass and roofs. I am going to have to say that this winter storm warning was a bust. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 3" at 7 AM. Will be hard to measure what falls during daylight but there will be a little more. More important was the 22 F temp, side roads were a sheet of ice and people all forgot how to drive over the past month. Chinook, sorry to hear! Wonder what happened. Did you get more overnight? I do think the WSW was kind of overblown, a few places N of Denver got >5" (including 5.8" 4 miles E of Fort Collins) and the usual places in the foothills got a lot but most of the area was less than 4". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValpoVike Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 In my area there is 1/2" to 1" of snow on the grass and roofs. I am going to have to say that this winter storm warning was a bust. According to the snow reports this morning, looks like FTC ended up with 6-7" this morning. Up here I have 9.2" which was a good performer and more than the 6" I expected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 I was a little too quick to say that the forecast was a bust. I have a storm total of 6.6". It snowed about 5.6" since I made that post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ConiferMtnMan Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 Received a whopping 1.5" at 8400'. Moisture just wasn't deep enough on the south side of the system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 Some good news for the mountains- multiple storm systems hit the mountains this week pic of my tree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 snow totals at my house November total: 9.3"December total: 18.8"January total: 9.0"February total: 13.3"March total: 6.6"season 57.0" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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