It’s finally time for a decent snowstorm to impact Colorado. This week’s snow will be the first widespread snow of the season and the first of hopefully many to come.
We all felt a little FOMO (Fear of missing out) from the major winter storm that dumped FEET of snow on Montana and the seemingly continuous snow that Wyoming has seen recently and this week, all of the Northern Rockies will see accumulating snow.
Not only will there be accumulating snow, but there will also be some extreme cold with this plunge of arctic weather as well.
TIMING:
Flakes are likely to start flying by Wednesday night in the Northern Colorado Rockies and progress further south overnight into the day on Thursday. Some of the snow on Thursday could be heavy as the main energy of the system passes through. We will start to see the system move out by Friday morning with sunshine back in the forecast for Friday evening.
IMPACTS:
Travel will be tough at times with snow-covered roads, especially the higher up in elevation you go. Prepare ahead if you have travel plans in the high country.
SNOW AMOUNT:
This will be a nice snow event for most mountainous areas. We’re looking at between 3-6″ for just about everyone. The north-central mountains may be favored slightly but generally this storm with produce less than half of a foot of snow.
TEMPERATURES:
Temperatures are going to drastically drop. It’s already getting cold in the Colorado Rockies but this surge of cold air is going to drop mountain towns and ski areas into the lower teens, single digits and for the higher elevations 8-9,000’+, negative digits are expected.
This will provide many ski areas with a nice base of natural snow to work with on top of the snow that is going to be man-made as well.
~Andy (Find Andy’s Weather Page on Facebook)
Andy is Colorado Ski Country’s Communication Coordinator. He is also a trained meteorologist with over 6 years of experience working most recently as a broadcast meteorologist.
