Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,607
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    ArlyDude
    Newest Member
    ArlyDude
    Joined

Mountain West Discussion


Chinook

Recommended Posts

Looks like we may get the first snow of the season below 9,000 feet Thursday night.

Been keeping an eye on that. A little snow before mid-September would be awesome even if it is just flurries in the air. Hope it bodes well for winter. Winter seems to be coming real early lots of places- I just got back from Denali on Saturday and there was a lot of snow above 2,500 feet during the week. I heard several of the workers say it was the most they'd seen in 10+ years while all the buses are still running for the summer season.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 321
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Looks like we may get the first snow of the season below 9,000 feet Thursday night. 

 

Depending on precip intensity, rain/snow or even just snow is possible much lower than that, perhaps below 6000' per latest model runs.

 

FWIW, the earliest Boulder has ever had measurable snow is 9/10 in 1898. Since then, it's only happened twice before 9/17.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 850-700mb temperatures are pretty near freezing Thursday night, so perhaps a trace of snow will fall even at low elevations. I am not sure when the earliest trace of snow has happened in Ft. Collins history. September 17th is (maybe) the earliest date for a major snowstorm in Ft. Collins history. According to NOWDATA, Ft. Collins has not received any snow in September since 2000.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 850-700mb temperatures are pretty near freezing Thursday night, so perhaps a trace of snow will fall even at low elevations. I am not sure when the earliest trace of snow has happened in Ft. Collins history. September 17th is (maybe) the earliest date for a major snowstorm in Ft. Collins history. According to NOWDATA, Ft. Collins has not received any snow in September since 2000.

 

According to the WRCC, the earliest measurable snowfall for Fort Collins came on 9/12/89. So this could tie or possibly even beat that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

August 2014 precipitation was much above normal for the I-76 corridor. Precipitation was light (although somewhat frequent) around my place.

 

attachicon.gifAug Precip(1).png

That color ramp is atrocious.  I'm not sure if it's custom or pre-fab, but someone needs to revamps it.  NWS Miami's scale for rainfall would be a better fit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now it has started to drizzle/rain steadily, and the temperature is only 45. This is the least pleasant early September day that I can remember. There are not even many days with afternoon temperatures in the 50's at this time of year, let alone 40's.

Back in New England we used to say "It's Providence-ing out" when it was like this, which it was in RI from roughly Thanksgiving through St Patrick's Day. At my house today it's been Providence-ing for 14 hours straight with only a few pauses. Blech. Just turned the heat on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was trying to look for the aurora borealis. I think the worldwide auroral activity may have weakened in the 1-2 hours that I was trying to look. Kp seems to have gone down between the time when I went out to the mountain, and when I came back. I saw one satellite flare.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We need to get some people signed up for the whole Central/Western subforum. Once the severe weather dies down in June/July, only a few posts are made in each thread.

It does get pretty quiet around here, but I can see why. Late summer/fall weather in this area isn't the most exciting. Maybe if we follow the lead of some of the other forums. The Tennessee Valley forum has a nice gardening thread that might translate over here well, and I really like New England's ski season threads. Those might not be 100% weather related, but it might liven up the board some.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm jealous... dumb HOA (and other family members) don't want something poking up too high from our roof, so anemometer is not useful for wind speed though direction is OK. Curious: how do you take care of lightning hitting that thing?

 

That's one thing I have kind of been worrying about... The pole in the photo was actually installed by Nedernet (our internet provider). We don't have any cables that run to the house that would provide high speed internet. Nedernet has microwave repeaters set up on some of the mountain sides and the small dish is our receiver. With a direct line of sight, you can get "high speed internet." It's not all that fast, but is our best option and is faster than satellite would be. For the weather station, we just installed another pole within the existing one to extend it a couple feet up. We do have plenty of trees surrounding the house that are higher than the roof and pole. We also have a large metal chimney for our wood stove, which I would assume would have the same effect as this pole. It may be naive of me, but figured it must not increase our risk all that much if the internet provider is installing rigs like this on lots of people's roofs. I've also heard that the metal doesn't necessarily attract lightning, but that it is just a good conductor of it. If anyone has more knowledge regarding this, I'd love to hear it! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 We do have plenty of trees surrounding the house that are higher than the roof and pole. We also have a large metal chimney for our wood stove, which I would assume would have the same effect as this pole. It may be naive of me, but figured it must not increase our risk all that much if the internet provider is installing rigs like this on lots of people's roofs. I've also heard that the metal doesn't necessarily attract lightning, but that it is just a good conductor of it. If anyone has more knowledge regarding this, I'd love to hear it! 

Trying to channel (poorly) my inner Ben Franklin here... I think the issue is that if the pole does get struck, you need something to conduct the electricity to the ground from there that is not your house. Good that you have higher trees around, that should help. On the other hand, I've been stuck in a thunderstorm on high ridges more than once and seen cloud-to-ground strikes go from above me to below me, right down in the adjacent valley... so the highest point isn't necessarily the one that's going to get struck!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...