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Forecast Discussion:
As printed in the prior special post, we are under a Winter Storm Warning for most of today and a Freeze Warning through Tuesday morning. I finished winterizing my camper at 5pm Sunday. That might have been playing it too close.
The front did hit around 6pm, and rain started around 8pm, an hour earlier than I called for. As I write, it is snowing in Cheyenne, WY, but rain has not changed over to snow in Fort Collins or Longmont yet (10pm).
Figure 1 shows the front making its powerful push into Colorado Sunday night. Figure 2 is the noon Monday forecast surface map showing a large shield of snow over most of our state. The pink dot is Longmont. Figure 3 is the same map but Monday PM as the storm weakens and warms a bit. We are on the edge of rain/snow.
The radar image from Sunday night shows the snow moving down out of Wyoming. This forecast tool has 8" total (not counting melting and compacting) over Longmont for this storm (and 12" amounts up in the northern mountains). But the GFS total snow accumulation through Monday PM pegs us in the 3-4" area.
In the longer range:
We warm up quite quickly after this storm (with Wednesday morning seeing one more hard freeze for the next week, or so. The jet-stream is north of us on Thursday morning when we might be back in the 70's. Hang in there today (Figure 6)!
Former hurricane Nate is speeding across the Tennessee Valley past the Ohio Valley. It may have the record for being the fastest moving Gulf storm observed.
