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Mountain West Discussion


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Just now, skierinvermont said:

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.

I am interested in hearing a more technical analysis of why the Para GFS is colder/wetter than the operational GFS for this storm in particular. The 0z Para GFS is a weenie run for everyone from Denver to Casper.

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2 hours ago, AlaskaETC said:

I am interested in hearing a more technical analysis of why the Para GFS is colder/wetter than the operational GFS for this storm in particular. The 0z Para GFS is a weenie run for everyone from Denver to Casper.

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

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Just now, skierinvermont said:

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

That makes a lot of sense. We'll see.

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Now the NAM is somewhat respectable compared to the global models, in terms of higher snowfall totals. Sometimes I don't know what it takes for our premiere US regional model to actually forecast snow for the Front Range.

I don't think we've had so many posts in the Mountain West discussion in 24hrs+  in .... forever.

It looks like now I can say that the snow/rain will develop east of I-25 tomorrow and rotate west over the next 6 hours to fill in the entire area, as the 700mb 0C line will stay in eastern Colorado.  A bunch of this rain will push north into Nebraska. The colder 700mb temperatures of -3C to -7C will be just enough to keep the precipitation as snow near I-25. I have kind of not looked at a bunch of the details with the radar/precip rate as each model had some different variations of this dynamic storm.

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3 hours ago, MidlothianWX said:

Having lived and tracked storms in the MA for ~10 years before moving here, I'll say that nothing beats a NESIS storm.

That being said, 20" events are a 1 in 5 year occurrence in Boulder, which might explain the lack of action here.

Moved from Central MA 10+ years ago, born and raised there. Funny that annual snowfall here is exactly the same as the neighborhood I came from (though the water equivalent is less than half). Differences are mainly that there is just so much weather of consequence in the NE due to more water, and the winter storms there (perhaps 8- 10 a year in a good year, some hit, some miss) all follow the same 2-3 patterns, which have great entertainment value. The suspense is always there. Here, we get lots of little storms, but only 1 or at most 2 good Four Corners lows a year. Drought and fires tend to turn one off from following the wx. The one exciting thing here that is different for sure is supercell thunderstorms- but they appear and vanish so quickly that "following" them is hard. Most significant hailstorms at any given point are impossible to predict more than a few hours in advance, if that. Anyway, just my $.02. Gettin' ready for a mayjawintastawm, ayuh.

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5 minutes ago, MidlothianWX said:

It will be interesting to see what the ensembles say. I know we are very close to game-time now but BOU has said that they are creating their maps based off of ensemble blends.

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.

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1 minute ago, skierinvermont said:

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. 

Yeah, which validates BOU's suspicion that this system might ultimately take a slightly more southerly track than has been depicted by some of the globals.

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I have safely arrived at the hotel in Estes Park. Travel was fine a bit foggy in the mountains though. With a fellow chaser. Hoping we can eclipse 2 feet here and my hope deep down is 3 feet,  but we’ll see. I’ve never seen more than 30” in my life. Good luck everyone. 

6z NAM looks a bit better btw

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2 hours ago, Wentzadelphia said:

I have safely arrived at the hotel in Estes Park. Travel was fine a bit foggy in the mountains though. With a fellow chaser. Hoping we can eclipse 2 feet here and my hope deep down is 3 feet,  but we’ll see. I’ve never seen more than 30” in my life. Good luck everyone. 

6z NAM looks a bit better btw

Welcome to EP.  Yes the fog has been thick since yesterday afternoon.  Which hotel did you choose?  Hint: Claire's downtown or the Notchtop have the best breakfasts :).

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2 hours ago, Wentzadelphia said:

I have safely arrived at the hotel in Estes Park. Travel was fine a bit foggy in the mountains though. With a fellow chaser. Hoping we can eclipse 2 feet here and my hope deep down is 3 feet,  but we’ll see. I’ve never seen more than 30” in my life. Good luck everyone. 

6z NAM looks a bit better btw

You never experienced 30 inches in the Philly area ? Not from a storm in 2009-2010?

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12 minutes ago, ValpoVike said:

12z HRRR is ticking up for Denver and points north by an additional .5", and an additional 1" in the foothills. 

Does anyone have any ideas on why the Para GFS is outputting lower QPF in the foothills than those down along the urban corridor?  Quite odd.

Nice to see the HRRR coming onboard. Just going to have to watch the radar fill in today. And I guess any southward trend (even 15-25 miles) will make a big difference locally. 

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3 minutes ago, n1vek said:

Nice to see the HRRR coming onboard. Just going to have to watch the radar fill in today. And I guess any southward trend (even 15-25 miles) will make a big difference locally. 

Even the 3km NAM is getting wetter.  About the same increase for FoCo and the Larimer foothills, but holding steady south.

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1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

You never experienced 30 inches in the Philly area ? Not from a storm in 2009-2010?

There may have been 30 spots near my house but I don’t think I hit it personally Think it was like 27” if I’m correct.

looks like NWS has 18-30 here so got a shot I suppose if we get lucky 

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