Sorry that I didn’t get to post an updated forecast until now (Friday night), work has been way too busy.
A system is coming in from the northwest. Like most systems from this direction, it won’t be a big producer for our patrol region. Here are the model snow forecasts from Friday evening to Saturday night:
WRF and RDPS Models: 3”
Canadian, UKMet, and European Models: 2”
American and NAM Models: 1”
And, Saturday looks to be pretty cold.
Then, unfortunately, a large ridge of high pressure moves over our patrol region (and Colorado) until Wednesday or so. If there’s any good news, it may actually not be too windy on Monday in our patrol zone. I don’t write that very often.
A strong low pressure from the southwest works its way (hopefully) towards us on Thursday. These can be massive snow producers for our patrol zone IF (i) they are in the right location and (ii) they stick around. On the former, it’s way too early to know – the American Model looks not too bad, but the European and Canadian Models put the low in the wrong spot. On the latter, it doesn’t look like it will stick around too long, which is not too surprising considering it’s not yet springtime. (In the springtime, these lows tend to hang around and dump snow.) Regardless, here are the medium-term model snow forecasts for Thursday, but let’s not rule out the unlikely but certainly possible chance of a much more significant storm.
American Model: 2”
Canadian and European Model: dusting
Retrospective Discussion:
Eldora got 6-7” from the Wednesday night storm (a touch less than my house in Golden with 8”), so the WRF and UKMet Models did a good pretty good job on this storm, the Canadian and American models only predicted half of what we got, and the European Model only predicted a third of the total snowfall.
Cheers.
-Jordan (Friday evening)
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.
