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Forecast Discussion:
Mild nice-ness continues today. Mountain snows continue today. Figure 1 shows a minor upper level ripple rolling past Colorado to the south keeping the snow-train blowing in the mountains and on the Western Slopes (and rain in New Mexico). We will just get breezes and clouds in NE Colorado. We warm up, a lot, right before the next storm with southwest winds and down-slope flow on tomorrow/Tuesday (Figure 2).
The longer range forecast:
The big news and the big question this week is concerning the next big storm (animation in Figure 3). Somewhere, not far to the east of us, or up into the foothills and over our town, heavy snow, winds to hurricane force/speed, incredible low pressure, and heavy amounts of rain will fall. This will be a very major winter/spring storm for Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma that some people will talk about for years. But will it be us?
Models like that at weatherunderground.com (Figure 2) have backed off, again, on how much snow we'll get. This run only shows 1-3 inches. The reason Longmont and North Denver to Fort Collins may get skipped is down- slope flow. Really significant down-slope flow. Remember, this flow of air off the mountains compresses the air, warms the air, and suppresses rainfall/snowfall due to the 'drying' that occurs in this process. Figure 4, the GFS, shows this powerful snow-hole along I-25 very clearly with just a coating to 1 inch of snow by Thursday. The GEM (Figure 5) keeps the NE quadrant of the state quite dry and again only gives us 1/2 to 1 inch. Figure 6, the NAM, gives us 4-5 inches, but areas around us 9-12 inches (just a few miles away to the east and west).
If you ARE hoping for a snow day, all hope is not lost. Much can change as we lock down the temperatures and actual eventual path of the low. It is still about 2 1/2 days away.
After that storm we return to normal temperatures and dry conditions. It might start to feel like spring for Spring Breaks all around.
