Clear Warm Weekend Ahead With More Snow Next Wednesday
It has been a good snow week for our patrol zone! Eldora’s 7 day snow total is now 15″. The snow fell cold and fluffy, with reported 5-6% SWE at the Nederland and Allenspark SnoTels, respectively. Champagne powder! It’s a great time to get some soft powder on top of a relatively stable snowpack, for January. We now have some clear weather ahead this weekend before another system hits Tuesday midday to Wednesday midday, depending on which model we look at. Forecasts for that system are as follows:
6.5″ – American Model
3″ – European Model
2″ – Canadian Model
Retrospective Discussion
The WRF model’s 5″ prediction nailed the snow report from Eldora for the Tuesday event, while all the other models underpredicted the event. Without Eldora’s snowstake webcam up still we don’t have visual verification, but local SnoTels reported considerably more – Allenspark reported 8.5″, Nederland reported 7.2″. That system seemed to suck in more moisture than predicted, and also the jetstream turn around for the upslope was more or less missed by most models – some areas of the eastern part of the state into Kansas saw 2′ of snow in 12 hours, while being forecasted to have 3-6″ arrive!
The Thursday event was underpredicted by all the models on Monday – Eldora saw 5″. Even the Wednesday night reports were only calling for ~3″ (American model/WRF) for Thursday, so Eldora has made out well this week considering the forecasts
– Ben (Friday 1/28 morning)
