Chinook

On February 15th (8 days ago) I posted a GEFS-500mb/SLP image for 240 hours (Feb 25th) that seems to partially correlate with today's weather (Feb 23rd.) There has briefly been some snow between Denver and Boulder today, but it must not have been too interesting. Colorado Springs is still getting some snow right now. At my place, it is not snowing or raining currently. There may have been some drizzle or snow near Loveland today, but it has not been below freezing since yesterday. Coming up Tuesday and Wednesday, we should have some chilly weather. It seems like we will get much-needed moderate temperatures and fair weather, possibly until March 2nd or March 3rd.

I think it's because there's a higher lapse rate near the 500mb low. Maybe models can't decide what to do with the banding of precipitation with some slight variations in lapse rate and higher values of vertical velocity. I'm not sure though. The liquid equivalent of snow and rain should be 0.20" to 0.30" near Denver. There is a winter storm watch for the Palmer Divide, and winter weather advisories for the mountains.

The next storm on Sunday should have some areas of snow from Denver, eastward to Goodland, KS. Otherwise, models differ on details. Areas of the plains should be above freezing and may get rain initially. The way things are going, this storm will find a way to bring snow to my house.

My place has gotten about 1.5" of snow today.

Weird anticyclonic snow band. It's a pretty interesting radar loop, if you happen to catch it soon.

A snow band developed very recently here. Hopefully this won't last too long.

I am not sure if you saw my recent post about the recent Iceland low pressure. There have been several strong low pressures have been in the Iceland region this winter. Seemingly, no matter what happens, Europe continues to get warmer air masses. I have heard that January 2020 was tied for the warmest January on record. (Source: Brian Brettscheider/ Climatologist49 on twitter.) I have barely seen any TropicalTidbits maps where the surface temperature was below normal in eastern Europe.

If you live on the Palmer Divide (Palmer Lake and east of it) there will be some 2" hailstorms. Along with that, hailstorms can lead to street flooding, and "hail drifts." As you can see on the SPC severe plot image, the high plain area is prone to 1"-2" hail, plus tornadoes on the east side of the Palmer Divide. The mountainous areas even get 0.75"-1" hail sometimes. See reference map with county boundaries on the right. This severe data is from 2010-2017. Luckily, the chance of fatalities in Colorado tornadoes is nearly zero. All of these places should get decent snowfall. North facing areas of the Palmer Divide will have snow and blizzard conditions from time to time. They warm up very quickly with 40mph chinook winds at some times during the winter. Places closer to Boulder and Golden have a greater chance of extreme chinook winds (70mph.) This is one of the places where you could have a winter storm watch and a tornado warning on the same day (Springtime only.)

In the short term, the NAM/Euro/Canadian show snow should happen Monday night and Tuesday, along with higher amounts over 18" in the mountains. In the long term, We may have something interesting to watch on the ensembles for cold temperatures and snow, for the February 25th time frame. It's not like I really need to shovel a lot more right now.

This doesn't really have a lot to do with North American weather, but this is about 2 mb away from breaking the non-hurricane pressure record for the Atlantic. (This should happen tomorrow.)

Low temperatures were between 4 and 14 degrees around here. Now it is 50 degrees with 30mph wind gusts. The front porch is wet all over the place.

Here's my snow totals FEB 2020 feb 3-4: freezing drizzle and 7.2" of snow feb 4-5: 1" feb 5: low temp of -5 to -15 feb 6: trace of snow + before midnight, wet roads feb 7-8: 5" feb 9: 0.5" feb 10: 2" feb 12-13: 2.5" 18.2" Loveland 2N co-op station (up to yesterday): 15.5", 0.88" Note: we really didn't get -16 degrees on two different days.

My area got about 2.0" since roughly 4:00PM yesterday.

This snow squall warning is just east of me. -- @NWSBoulder: A snow squall warning is in effect until 5:30 PM MST for I-76 near Lochbuie, CO; I-25 near Longmont, CO; US-85 near Denver--Aurora, CO and US-85 near Fort Lupton, CO.

All of a sudden, I feel like I live next to a great lake. My place has had measureable snow for 5 out of the last 8 days and a trace on Thursday. @NWSBoulder Most areas along and west of I-25 have had 1-2" of snow and have slushy roads. Snow will decrease north of Denver by 11 PM, with 1/2 inch per hour snowfall continuing from Denver south and west, decreasing in those areas in the early morning hours. #cowx

I don't see this on any particular local storm report. Nevertheless, it is incredible what can happen when 500mb wind streak goes over a mountain range, with complex aerodynamics. I am not sure of the timing, so I don't know what the 500mb wind speed was at the time of this report. Raindance, unfortunately, mesoscale models still have quite low values of snow for Albuquerque, but at least some 0.3-0.5" of rain might be possible. --- NWS Boulder: Snow will increase along the Front Range during the rush hour, with slushy/icy roads by 8 PM, especially from Denver south and west. #cowx --

Yesterday we had some 40 degree temps yesterday and much better roads. We had with downslope wind gusts into the late night hours with temperatures above freezing at midnight. Now, our area has cooled down and gotten some snow again. It is associated with a developing 500mb low pressure in California and the cold front aloft extending eastward. My area has less than 1", but there appears to be 3-6" reports near Boulder, and 0.7" at DIA

I think I got another 2" after I posted yesterday. New snow bands came in. One of the snow bands shifted north of Fort Collins for a few hours until I went to bed. I wonder what happened there? Maybe 0.5" to 1" per hour snowfall rate for a while. For me, this now rivals the week of November 26th as the 2nd snowiest week I have seen in a few years, with, I think, 13.2" at my place. Most models agree on QPF values of 0.8" or better in New Mexico on Tuesday. I assume this will be mostly snow as the 700mb temperatures will be much lower than average.

This was the track of the 60.0 mile long Bay Springs tornado (EF-2) complete storm survey information (Jackson NWS) https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=202002070252-KJAN-NOUS44-PNSJAN

My area got a band of snow this morning, generally after 8:00AM. We got 3". Temperatures have warmed to around 30 degrees, so snow is not as fluffy as before, and the streets are getting better already. By my calculations, that puts my place at 43.6" for the year, which puts us above average for this date. The snowless January has not seriously put us in danger of below normal snowfall for the year. The GFS shows snow in Albuquerque on Tuesday??? What??!!

The NW-flow snow event is already happening. A trace of snow occurred here at about 6:00PM and made the sidewalks a little slippery. So that makes 4 straight days this week that I have driven on wet or slippery roads. We are expecting some more snow tomorrow, with a winter weather advisory. low temps on Wednesday. I drove in between Loveland and Fort Collins with at least -11 F temperatures and some leftover snow from Tuesday. Thankfully, there was some open pavement that was non-icy. tomorrow's snowfall:

Possible tornadoes near McCormick, SC and Washington, GA

Possible tornado near Hillsborough, west of Durham

New tornado warning west of Albemarle.

Slightly earlier radar image near Matthews