Jordan’s FR Forecast

With the May 6-7 storm just finished, I think it’s time to write a season wrap-up.  So, here goes: How did the Models Perform this Year?                 Like all of the prior years’ analysis with the ten million caveats I won’t bore you with again, I did the math, and we have a new winner of the best model.  It’s the German Icon Model.  The WRF Model was unsurprisingly the second most reliable, and the UK Met was the third most reliable.  The usually dependable Canadian Model did awful this year.  And once again, the NAM Model did so poorly, I’m not sure why I even include its solutions in my forecasts.  How did I come up with this assessment? For predicting the right amount of snow, the Icon and WRF Models did the best job, followed by the UK Met and European Models.  The American Model came in fifth, NAM and RDPS were next, with the Canadian Model dead last.  Canada, what happened this year?  For not being wildly off in snow predictions, Icon was easily the best, being wildly off either high or low less than a quarter of the time.  The UK Met, WRF, RDPS, European, and Canadian were all only wildly off about a third of the time.  The American Model was wildly off half the time, and the NAM Model was wildly off two thirds of the time.  Wow – if we set aside the WRF Model, this is not a good showing for America. And the mode forecasts by the Icon and WRF Models were most often correct, while the mode forecasts by the American, Canadian, and NAM Models was way too low.  And overall, all eight models I frequently looked at tended to underpredict as opposed to overpredict storms. How was the ski season?                 There’s an old saying that Colorado almost always has average snow years, while California almost never has average snow years – in California all years are way lower or way higher than average.  And once again, we had a pretty average year here.  For whatever reason, February was much better than normal, and April was worse than normal.  May is off to a great start (2.2” of SWE at the Lake Eldora Snotel).  Overall, we had a number of great storms, but an unfortunately warm spring until this past week.  Here is the season graphically from the Lake Eldora Snotel, with green being average and black being this year.                  Anyhow, I hope everyone enjoyed these forecasts, and I hope you have a wonderful summer of skiing on Colorado’s permanent snowfields until it starts snowing again in the fall. -Jordan (Thursday 5/8/25) Geeky Notes: References to the American Model are to the American (GFS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 9,439’.  References to the Canadian Model are the Canadian (GDPS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 10,253’.  References to the WRF Model are the CAIC WRF Hi-Res Model point forecast for Eldora Ski Area with an elevation of 9,189’.  References to the European Model are to the European (ECMWF) Model on a point with my cursor at my best estimate of Eldora Ski Area.  For big picture overviews, I tend to rely on the American Model, not because I think it is the most accurate, but because (i) it is free and (ii) I like its interface. 

Even though our patrol season is done for the winter, it looks like we’re going to have a wintry week next week.  A large closed low pressure system looks to (hopefully) bring a lot of springtime moisture to our front range patrol zone.  The wind direction is forecasted to be predominantly from the east, not the west, for the first half of next week.  This is always a good sign.  Between Monday May 5 and Wednesday May 7 (with the exception of the UK Met Model as discussed below), here are the various model snow forecasts: 19” – European Model 14” – Canadian Model 13” – UK Met Model 10” – American Model 7” – Icon Model The UK Met Model sees a different scenario, with snow continuing into the morning of Friday May 9, and the number above is its prediction for the entire week.  Fingers’ crossed this comes in as predicted or more!  And, considering that the temperatures will just barely be below freezing, this will be great base building snow for our late spring / early summer ski season! -Jordan (Friday 5/2/25 afternoon) Geeky Notes: References to the American Model are to the American (GFS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 9,439’.  References to the Canadian Model are the Canadian (GDPS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 10,253’.  References to the WRF Model are the CAIC WRF Hi-Res Model point forecast for Eldora Ski Area with an elevation of 9,189’.  References to the European Model are to the European (ECMWF) Model on a point with my cursor at my best estimate of Eldora Ski Area.  For big picture overviews, I tend to rely on the American Model, not because I think it is the most accurate, but because (i) it is free and (ii) I like its interface. 

With our patrol season over, after this, I’m only going to forecast moving forwards when interesting things happen.  Warmer temperatures return this week.  Friday we may get some new snow (5” per the American Model but only 1” per the Canadian Model).  Then, in what is basically forecast fairyland, the Canadian and American Models are both calling for 3” of snow next Tuesday.  Retrospective Discussion: Eldora picked up 13” of snow in the most recent system.  So, the day before the system started, the Icon Model was spot-on, the WRF Model was way too high, The American, European, and NAM Models were a bit low, the RDPS Model was way too low, and the Canadian and UK Met Models were just embarrassing, calling for a mere 4”.  Five days before the system started, The American, European, and UK Met Models all did a decent job predicting the storm, with the Icon Model a bit low, and the Canadian Model way too low.  Ironically, five days out the mean solution was actually closer to what we got than one day out. Cheers. -Jordan (Sunday 4/20/25 morning)

Ahh, the joys of forecasting low pressure systems in the springtime in our patrol zone (a/k/a who the heck knows how much snow we’ll get).  Two rounds of closed lows mean upslope snows on Friday with a touch more on Saturday, and then maybe snow on Sunday too.  Or maybe not.  The details are still very much up in the air (no pun intended).  I’d repeat what you’ve often read from me how these are storms are unpredictable, but I don’t need to do that when you see the various model solutions, below.  Here are the model solutions for the Friday/Saturday storm: 20” – WRF Model 13” – Icon Model 10” – American, European, and NAM Models 7” – RDPS Model 4” – Canadian and UK Met Models And here are the model solutions for snow on Sunday: 3” – Canadian Model 0” – American, Icon, UK Met, and European Models Regardless of the snowfall amounts, temperatures look to be colder than is seasonal for Friday and Saturday.  Sunday should be a bit warmer, but still comparatively cold.  And then, if you believe the Canadian Model, we’ll get 13” of snow this upcoming Thursday and Friday, and if you believe the American Model, we’ll get 0.1”.  Don’t shoot the messenger when it comes to these forecasts, all I’m doing is reporting on what the world’s most sophisticated weather models predict.  (Some darn butterfly must be flapping its wings again in Brazil.) Cheers. -Jordan (Thursday 4/17/25 morning) Geeky Notes: References to the American Model are to the American (GFS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 9,439’.  References to the Canadian Model are the Canadian (GDPS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 10,253’.  References to the WRF Model are the CAIC WRF Hi-Res Model point forecast for Eldora Ski Area with an elevation of 9,189’.  References to the European Model are to the European (ECMWF) Model on a point with my cursor at my best estimate of Eldora Ski Area.  For big picture overviews, I tend to rely on the American Model, not because I think it is the most accurate, but because (i) it is free and (ii) I like its interface. 

This week looks to be warm and sunny through Thursday.  Then, we have a classic springtime cut-off low that may impact the front range including our patrol zone.  These are sometimes huge snow producers with their upslope winds, and these are sometimes huge disappointments.  So, take the various model solutions, especially this far out, with a giant gain of salt.  In other words, two feet or two inches could still very much be possibilities.  With that caveat, here are the current model solutions for our patrol zone: 15” – UK Met Model 12” – American and European Models 9” – Icon Model 6” – Canadian Model Best guess is that most fall snow will fall on Friday leading to the best turns on Saturday morning, but good chance Sunday morning will be great too.  And probably lower elevations and further north in our patrol zone will get more snow.  But this is all just guesswork at this point.  Fingers crossed for snow.  Retrospective Discussion: While the Wednesday model runs weren’t predicting any snow for Sunday night, by the Friday model runs they were, and Eldora picked up 3” on Sunday night.  The American Model was a hair too low, the Canadian Model was a bit too high, the WRF Model really dropped the ball predicting nothing.  Cheers. -Jordan (Monday 4/14/25 Morning) Geeky Notes: References to the American Model are to the American (GFS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 9,439’.  References to the Canadian Model are the Canadian (GDPS) Model grid including Brainerd Lake with an average elevation of 10,253’.  References to the WRF Model are the CAIC WRF Hi-Res Model point forecast for Eldora Ski Area with an elevation of 9,189’.  References to the European Model are to the European (ECMWF) Model on a point with my cursor at my best estimate of Eldora Ski Area.  For big picture overviews, I tend to rely on the American Model, not because I think it is the most accurate, but because (i) it is free and (ii) I like its interface.