We’re in for a wild few days of weather, and let’s all hope for as much precipitation as possible to help slow the spread of the horrid forest fires. As discussed below, there’s a good chance for a foot or more of snow on Sunday.
Here are the details. A powerful and complicated storm has its eyes set on our patrol region for Sunday. Before then, expect (unfortunately for the fires) strong and very gusty westerly winds on Saturday. Snow starts Sunday morning. By Monday sunrise, the models predict the following amount of snow for our patrol region:
The RDPS Model: 17”
The Canadian Model: 16”
The NAM Model: 13”
The WRF Model: 13”
The European Model: 11”
The American Model: 5”
Both the Canadian Model and the European Model are predicting an additional 1” of snow after sunrise on Monday.
It looks like this will be a right side up storm (i.e., starting warm and ending cold). Part of me thinks the models may be under-predicting this storm as the temperature profile will hit the goldilocks zone for snow production for a while during the storm. Another part of me thinks the models may be over-predicting this storm as the upslope component of the storm looks very weak. Anyhow, we’ll see.
As an aside, for those thinking of skiing at a ski area next week, the temperatures look low enough following the storm to make the opening of A-Basin, Loveland, and/or Keystone a possibility. And, I must mention that the European Model is calling for 32” at Wolf Creek Pass by Tuesday morning – so if that pans out Wolf Creek might be trying to open as well.
Pray for snow everyone.
-Jordan (Friday morning)
Note: Unless otherwise noted, all forecasts are for 10,000’ in exposed areas. References to American Model are the American (GFS) Model. References to the Canadian Model are the Canadian (GDPS) Model. References to the WRF Model are the CAIC WRF Hi-Res Model. References to the European Model are the European (ECMWF) Model.
