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Mountain West- Winter


Chinook

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GFS, 0.35 near DEN airport, 0.47" for Denver downtown, NAM, 0.90" for Denver.

If you like the SREF plumes for precipitation/snow amounts, the SREF plumes have essentially 0-16" for the Denver area. Thanks, SREF! That really narrows it down. I think 0" is too low.

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yes, 18z NAM still has pretty decent QPF from the Denver metro up to Fort Collins

3AM forecast discussion from Denver/Boulder

Quote

Another shortwave around the upper trough will reinforce the cold
push Tuesday with a 130 kt jet pushing into the Great Basin and
into southern Colorado. Pacific moisture will be entrained in this
system and moderate upward QG motion is expected. This will bring
in moderate to heavy snow at times to the mountains and spread
over the plains. For now, its looking more like 4 to 10 inches
over the high mountains, this time with less wind. Over the
plains, temperatures will likely only warm into the 20s, and 2 to
4 inches of snow may fall. The jet may produce banding, and
therefore highly variable amounts may occur over a short distance,
with some locally heavier amounts.

 

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Just as the models were converging on 2-3" of fluff for Denver Metro, they diverge again. 00z GFS has a bullseye of 6" right over Denver (15:1) with about 0.35" QPF, and NAM has 1" or less with barely a few hundredths of QPF. Sigh. Given how dry it's been the NAM may be right, but hope it's wrong. I want to go live in a rainforest for a bit.

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I've always despised the NAM QPF, especially close to an event. Regardless of my feelings, the NAM can be said to be an outlier for the Front Range. Not saying it can't be right, but it's on its own. I think the NWS is calling it correctly. A conservative forecast, and the opportunity to bump up totals if needed. I hope the GFS is onto something with some higher totals, though.

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Hey All - This is my first winter in Denver after a lifetime in New England. I don't know much about the micro-climates and nuances with storm systems here like I do back home. What should we watch out for? I've been hearing the last couple days that some model outputs are putting a bullseye (for the plains) around the Denver metro. What needs to happen to overperform the consensus of 2-4"?

Thanks!

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I'm pretty new to the area as well, and I'm sure others have better perspectives. In general what you'd like to see for good accumulations along the Front Range would be favorable jet position, but even more so easterly flow. Ideally the easterly flow would be deep (surface to 500mb) and with good fetch, but in this storm it's pretty shallow (not much above 700 mb). This is anticyclonic upslope (i.e. due to clockwise flow around an area of high pressure to our north) as opposed to cyclonic upslope, which would be due to a low to the south of the Denver metro. I think in general anticyclonic upslope doesn't "perform" as well as cyclonic. Of course we're also dealing with an extremely dry, arctic airmass.

Either way I'm looking forward to seeing some snow!

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46 minutes ago, nrhardin said:

I'm pretty new to the area as well, and I'm sure others have better perspectives. In general what you'd like to see for good accumulations along the Front Range would be favorable jet position, but even more so easterly flow. Ideally the easterly flow would be deep (surface to 500mb) and with good fetch, but in this storm it's pretty shallow (not much above 700 mb). This is anticyclonic upslope (i.e. due to clockwise flow around an area of high pressure to our north) as opposed to cyclonic upslope, which would be due to a low to the south of the Denver metro. I think in general anticyclonic upslope doesn't "perform" as well as cyclonic. Of course we're also dealing with an extremely dry, arctic airmass.

Either way I'm looking forward to seeing some snow!

Same and thanks for the information! Forecast looks great in the mountains for the next week. Took Friday off to ski Breck for the day.

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Fort Collins got down to -5F, and around -10F outside the city limits. Casper WY got to -30F last night. There's been nothing comparable in Casper since February 2014. Looks like urban areas of Denver got down to -2F to 2F.

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Edit: Casper hit a low of -33F, the most recent roughly equivalent temp was -32F on Feb. 17 2006.

Denver hit a low of -10F at DIA

Fort Collins-CSU hit a low of -7F.

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Conditions at: KDEN observed 08 December 2016  12:53 UTC
Temperature: -22.2°C (-8°F)
Dewpoint: -24.4°C (-12°F) [RH = 82%]
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The 12z and 18z GFS today have more snow for eastern Colorado with that large storm system on Friday-Saturday. It is still a long way out, so I expect snow forecasts will change.   It won't be a closed upper low at 500mb or 700mb. One thing I expect: temps near 0 on either Saturday or Sunday.

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My third winter in the west and shaping up to be more typical or maybe even above average?  11" of snow so far this month at my house.  12 - 18" forecast in tomorrows storm then strong cold to continue...  Mount Bachelor ( 21 miles from my home ) has more than a 5' base and 146" at the base so far the season.. photo from my "attempted" ski day on Sunday.. 

 

 

 

 

Bachelor12:11:16.jpg

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