Saturday looks to be warm and sunny, and Sunday will be warm as well, but with snow starting in the afternoon.
A large closed low, pulling moisture from both the Pacific and the Gulf, looks to meander its way over our patrol zone Sunday evening to Tuesday or Wednesday – but with the center of the low well south of us (centering around northern New Mexico when it’s lined up with us per the American Model’s most recent run). The models still vigorously disagree about how this storm will play out, but at least we’re not still in the wild 2” to 62” forecasts from Tuesday’s model runs.
Below are the various model snow forecasts for our patrol zone from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday when the storm looks to be over. Monday looks to be the heaviest snow day.
18” – American Model
11” – Canadian Model
4” – European Model
3” – UK Met Model
Fingers’ crossed the storm plays out with the last one, that the American Model was closest to getting right.
Temperatures warm back up starting around Thursday March 24, with the next snow in the forecast not until the edge of forecast fairyland around Sunday March 27.
Retrospective Discussion:
Between 14-15” of snow fell at Eldora from this most recent storm, so after a few weeks of the models overpredicting snow, it was nice that they (mostly) underpredicted this one. The WRF Model, UK Met, and European Models’ 6-8” predictions were happily quite far off. The Canadian Model underestimated the storm a bit predicting 10”, and the American Model overpredicted (but was the closest to accurate) with 17”.
Cheers.
-Jordan (Friday (3/18) 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.
