Let’s start with the good news. A powerful system is on its way to Colorado, originating near the Aleutian Islands of Alaska but also pulling moisture in the warmer southern waters of the Pacific Ocean. It looks set to come in on multiple waves between Saturday night and early Tuesday. Probably a brief lull after that and then another system comes in from the northwest on Wednesday-ish. The weather pattern continues to look active all the way out to forecast fairyland. Yeah!
Here’s the bad news – while these storms will pound other parts of Colorado (more details on that below), the westerly / southwesterly nature of this storm means that our patrol area will not see a ton of snow. But hey, some snow and cold temperatures are better than no snow and warm temperatures, right?
Here are some of the various model predictions:
Canadian Model – 2” Saturday night, 2.5” late Monday to early Tuesday, .5” on Thursday, 4” next Saturday and Sunday (11/14-15)
American Model – 1” Saturday night, 3” Monday, 1.5” Wednesday, 2” on Saturday (11/14)
NAM – 2.5” Saturday night, 2” Sunday night
The European Model is calling for a total of 6” between Sunday and Wednesday and the UK Met is calling for a total of 5” during the same time.
I should note for what it’s worth this storm is going to be epic down in the San Juans. The NAESF ensemble forecast for Wolf Creek (I rarely mention the ensembles in my forecasts as there’s not good data for our patrol region) has the most pessimistic ensemble run at 30,” the most optimistic ensemble run at 80”, and the American/Canadian ensemble model mean at 50”. (That’s not a typo.) While I tend to find this ensemble overpredicts Colorado snow, (European Model is calling for 28”), no matter what it should be an awesome storm for the San Juan Mountains!
-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.
