mayjawintastawm

I have a feeling in my bones.... No actually, I need to decide whether to ski tomorrow (bluebird skies, probably no powder but decent conditions) or a day next weekend (chance of huge powder, also possible horrendous traffic and no visibility). I know the best answer is "both" but that's not really an option. Good problem to have, I suppose.

2.0"/0.14" at my house, pretty nice compared to predicted. Looks like we'll have 5.4" total for the month and 22.3" season to date. Come on, February!

Could happen... nah. Might be fun for some bored mets to add up long-range snow totals from the GFS (say, hour 240 and bigger) in different places over a winter and see what happens. Tens of feet, I'm sure. On a more serious/scientific note, is there a point to these super long-range forecasts? Are they just a starting point for model improvements to see what happens year over year? I'd guess there are some poor souls up in Boulder or somewhere tasked with improving the GFS at hours 240-384. It would be nice to have something in between the very broad-brush probabilistic outlooks for temp and precip that CPC creates and the super-precise but completely unreliable model outputs we get. (also the CPC outlooks page looks like it hasn't been redesigned since the last millennium).

I've been out of town this whole time, was planning to fly back this evening but flight canceled - grr. will have to make do with the archive of my thermometer and snow estimates from COCORAHS. Looks like 1.3" total from the whole event. Anyway, kudos to all who managed this crazy cold.

A year or two ago I had 3" of fluff in my driveway that I was able to move by getting down on my knees and blowing. That was probably 30-40:1. Ridiculous.

My picnic table is affected a lot by NW winds and was mostly scoured clean. Best average I could find around here poking around with my ruler was 2.1". Probably 15:1 ratio. COCORAHS spotters were pretty consistent around 2.5" south, east and west of here by a few miles, so I'd trust this.

Great news. My home area (Loveland) still is only 20% open and maybe will get another 5-6" by next weekend, an inch at a time. Still waiting for more than dust. All the energy keeps going south and east. Good thing I'm planning an East coast trip to visit relatives next weekend- will experience their bulletproof glacier by Friday with a foot and a half of snow today followed by 2.5" rain on Wednesday then a freeze-up. Don't miss that a whole lot.

I'm sort of glad I don't have to keep redefining "northern and western suburbs", though it would be nice to have something, anything, to talk about.

If this were the New England forum we'd already be wringing our hands about whether we'd get 0.5 or 4 or 15 inches of snow. (in fact, they are.)

Snowfall season to date: October 8.0", November 1.5", December 7.4" (surprise!), total 16.9". So an average start to what feels like a really dry season to date so far.

That was the storm that saved Christmas week for the I-70 ski areas. This year, not so much. Lots of dead batteries the morning of 12/22.

Even the NWS BOU forecasters are looking at hour 240 on the models. Yawn. Skied yesterday at Loveland with the lowest % open by this point in the season in my 14 Decembers here. Beats working, but we could really use a couple storms.

We had snow for a lot of hours just north of APA, but it amounted to 3.8" total over the 24 hours or so that it snowed (3.4" in the first 6 hours). We were on the edge of heavier stuff.

Missed it by that much... 1.4" at my house, total December snow 3.6" (that may be it for the month)

Another non-event. Precip since I installed my new PWS on 9/15 is 0.84 inches, which correlates very well with the two official stations around here. Last year, Cherry Creek Reservoir was completely frozen over by now; this year, not a trace of ice.

Thanks. That describes the spatial changes but not as much the late Fall trend. Maybe not enough tornadoes to show up as a signal with STP or numbers of reports of strong tornadoes, but it sure seems different.

It seems like the period between 11/20 and 12/15 has become particularly scary for TN and NC the last 20-30 years in terms of nighttime strong tornadoes. Do we have data to back that up? I remember driving from RDU to western NC for school a little before the turn of the millennium late at night right after Thanksgiving, and encountering some really scary weather. The pattern seems to have continued.

We got 1.4", same deal. Surprised you didn't get more- the west side of Boulder and Genesee did well.

I've made a snowball in every calendar month in CO. I think Loveland Pass (11992') is the windiest place I've ever been in a car, and I've been through a couple of low-end hurricanes. Is K0CO what you see uphill from Berthoud Pass on the ridge, on the right as you're driving north (toward Winter Park)? That's at least 500 feet above the pass itself.

Yup, 68.5 F for a high here in south metro Denver. This time of year, that can only mean a steep temp drop and chance for snow within 48 hrs.

A quick and pleasant surprise of 0.7" this AM, enough to get the dogs excited. Gone by 3 PM, in time for a chilly bike ride. Not a bad day.

Finished November with a paltry 1.5" of snow and 0.17" total moisture. I wonder if Albuquerque or Denver will have more snow this season.

NWS BOU AFD this morning is really interesting- the long term section by someone named Rodriguez is particularly well written, though of course I don't understand all of it. Nothing earth shaking, just a really nice explanation that you don't often see.

A while back when I was bored on a long drive between CO and OH (my daughter went to college near Cincinnati) it occurred to me that most time zones line up with longitude lines that are multiples of 15 degrees (duh, there are 24 time zones and GMT is aligned with 0). So Denver is about average for the Mountain Time zone at 105 degrees W, but Cincinnati is way west for the Eastern time zone at 84.5 W. Indiana is even stranger.

8 here this AM. Amazing how the first snow of the year can pull down Arctic air to rival midwinter temps.