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Mountain West Discussion


Chinook
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It was 63F today. Naturally ahead of the mother of all cold fronts, with gusts to 70 mph observed on some of the mountains. Now it is 45F, windy, and snowing west of the city where the cold has arrived already. Will be interesting to see if it tries to flurry in the city tonight. I've seen it snow here within 12 hours of hitting 75F, so it wouldn't be that surprising.

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It was 63F today. Naturally ahead of the mother of all cold fronts, with gusts to 70 mph observed on some of the mountains. Now it is 45F, windy, and snowing west of the city where the cold has arrived already. Will be interesting to see if it tries to flurry in the city tonight. I've seen it snow here within 12 hours of hitting 75F, so it wouldn't be that surprising.

Not sure what city you are in, but if you are speaking of DEN, it will definitely snow tonight. NWS is calling for up to 5” in the city by end of storm tomorrow AM.


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Well, we mainly missed out on this one too, almost everyone did. None of the models were right: EC was south and GFS was north and whatever happened was fast and even further south. We eked out a good 2-2.5" but that's about it. Pretty though, and pretty windy, though nothing spectacular. Seems like 80% of storms around here move faster than everyone thinks they will.

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Well, we mainly missed out on this one too, almost everyone did. None of the models were right: EC was south and GFS was north and whatever happened was fast and even further south. We eked out a good 2-2.5" but that's about it. Pretty though, and pretty windy, though nothing spectacular. Seems like 80% of storms around here move faster than everyone thinks they will.


Yeah it’s safe to say no one got this one right. NWS leaned heavily on EC and still got drilled. GFS (the new one) was way off. I’m in Berkeley/Highlands and looks like maybe an inch. It just goes to show you that Mother Nature does was Mother Nature wants! This has been a weird year. At least the big mountains are doing well! Denver = meh for snow this year


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My area got about 1" of snow. We had some gusts to 45mph at FNL airport while getting light snow after midnight. The initial burst of snow at about 8:45PM looked really nice on the METARS, however, this heavy snow portion didn't last.

KFNL 220345Z AUTO 02024G37KT 1/4SM +SN FZFG BKN004 BKN011 OVC018 M02/M03 A2963 RMK AO2 PK WND 02037/0341 RAB25E30SNB30 CIG 002V007 FZRANO PNO $

Limon, Colorado blizzard conditions (as of 7:19 AM)

KLIC 221419Z AUTO 34034G48KT 1/4SM +SN FZFG VV008 M07/M08 A2991 RMK AO2 PK WND 33048/1413 P0000 T10671078

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I'm not expecting too much precipitation or extreme heat or cold for Colorado or New Mexico in February, but the 1/1 Jamstec run was a pretty good forecast for Spring 2018, and it has a pretty good Spring 2019 for us - cold, wet. The CFS has been showing a very wet March for a while now in NM and CO. I don't trust it this far out, but my current Spring 2019 analogs have a pretty cold and wet March for the Plains and the Rockies. It's hard to say exactly how cold and wet, since the ESRL site that lets you blend analogs is down.

I've got four independent methods of predicting precipitation totals in Albuquerque in Spring, and they all say "wet Spring", which is interesting, since a lot of the data favors a dry May.

As far as temps go, the low-solar El Ninos tend to be average to warm in the East in March after a cold February. The big +NAO years in October, like 2018 tend to see cold in the West centered on AZ in both January (check) and March (maybe?). The El Ninos when a major hurricane hits the Gulf Coast tend to see extreme cold follow in March somewhere in the Western half of the US. Years with +SOI values in December also tend to favor a warm SE / relatively cold NW US in March. For New Mexico, I'm expecting March to be colder and wetter than average in the same month for the first time in over a decade, since 2005. March 2007 was wet and warm, March 2010 was cold and dry. March 2015 & 2016 were both warm and dry, although Feb 22-28 2015 had 70-100 inches of snow in the mountains here. Years with extremely high precipitation in October in the Southwest tend to have tropical moisture feeding into the region, and that tends to repeat in March. Large areas of Arizona and New Mexico had extremely wet conditions in October. September moisture from the tropics, for whatever reason corresponds better to February, and it was drier then.

 DxYAbU0VAAAiuoD.jpg

DxYAbUpUwAAeBqH.jpg

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I just had to shovel 3" of snow. January is no longer super-low on snowfall. With a possible water content of 0.24" added with 0.48" before this, my place is at 0.72" of water equivalent for the month. My area is above normal precipitation for the month, and good bit of it was rain.

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My Winter analogs from October had the East cold and the West warm in February. Not sure that's going to happen now. I think the core of the cold may be centered over Missouri or Iowa instead of Ohio or New York, and that may be enough to get NM, CO, WY, MT to a near normal February, with the core of the heat west of the Continental Divide.

When the MJO went into phase 2-3 in October, Albuquerque had a high of 42F on 10/15, which is insane (normal is 71F). 

Feb/Mar can be extremely cold in the West when the MJO gets to phase 2-3 in Feb/Mar/Apr - and it's kind of due since we skipped 2/3 in January. Would really like to see what this pattern could do in Feb/Mar with the MJO in 2 or 3 at high amplitude. None of the models really have that as an outcome, but I'd imagine its possible sometime after 2/5. 

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15 hours ago, stlirish said:


Yup! I’m close to 4” in Regis/Berkely area in NW Denver.


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We finished with 5". Thinking 15-20:1, it was pretty standard fluff.

We've done pretty well in Jan compared to many- around 18" when you add everything up, and at least 1" melted, especially given the concrete 6" we had early in the month, some of which is still glaciating in the shade.

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27 minutes ago, mayjawintastawm said:

We finished with 5". Thinking 15-20:1, it was pretty standard fluff.

We've done pretty well in Jan compared to many- around 18" when you add everything up, and at least 1" melted, especially given the concrete 6" we had early in the month, some of which is still glaciating in the shade.

January has been fairly good on the west side of town too — about 21” total here. Finally a not-bad snow month. Still don’t really understand what has been better for us in a large scale pattern sense. Some of it has been pure luck. This month “should” have been worse and December way better, I think, based on the broader pattern.

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After re-scoring my top weather matches for July-Jan, and then looking for a blend that looks relatively close for the AMO, PDO, ENSO, Solar, Modoki, Monsoon, ENSO in the prior winter, and my local weather for both precip and highs each month, I've settled on my Spring analogs. March is actually very sensitive to the NAO in Oct, the SOI in Dec, solar conditions, and ENSO at a one year lag in various parts of the US, but most of those things favor Eastern warmth without much impact on the West.

Tentatively like this blend with the East 3-4F warmer and the West 1-2F warmer after adjusting for the higher October NAO, the higher December SOI, the lower solar conditions, and the prior ENSO being a La Nina. The blend includes years with major hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast, and tries to respect the +1.5 NAO in Oct and +9.1 SOI in Dec.  It also includes my top precipitation matches as an MJO indicator, and is fairly close nationally on Tmax transitions in Fall/Winter. My main adjustment from the NAO, Solar, SOI and ENSO prior is to extend the heat in MN to the SE and SW, leaving the cold core centered on Kansas roughly. April also looks very cold in the West before everything kind of snaps in May.

67jfXnD.png

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9 hours ago, raindancewx said:

After re-scoring my top weather matches for July-Jan, and then looking for a blend that looks relatively close for the AMO, PDO, ENSO, Solar, Modoki, Monsoon, ENSO in the prior winter, and my local weather for both precip and highs each month, I've settled on my Spring analogs. March is actually very sensitive to the NAO in Oct, the SOI in Dec, solar conditions, and ENSO at a one year lag in various parts of the US, but most of those things favor Eastern warmth without much impact on the West.

Tentatively like this blend with the East 3-4F warmer and the West 1-2F warmer after adjusting for the higher October NAO, the higher December SOI, the lower solar conditions, and the prior ENSO being a La Nina. The blend includes years with major hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast, and tries to respect the +1.5 NAO in Oct and +9.1 SOI in Dec.  It also includes my top precipitation matches as an MJO indicator, and is fairly close nationally on Tmax transitions in Fall/Winter. My main adjustment from the NAO, Solar, SOI and ENSO prior is to extend the heat in MN to the SE and SW, leaving the cold core centered on Kansas roughly. April also looks very cold in the West before everything kind of snaps in May.

67jfXnD.png

Based on a handful of other forecasts and model runs, it seems that one can dare to be a bit more optimistic for above average precip in CO (especially the Front Range) than your map indicates.

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72" is definitely high! 24 hours is generally not enough time for that much snow. It's possible that the record is 75.8" in 24 hours in Silver Lake Colorado. I also heard that Valdez Alaska had 78" in 24 hours.

Winter storm watch for Colorado mountain areas

NWS-digital forecast shows 2-3" of snow for Wednesday, below 6000 ft in the metro areas

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