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Mountain West Discussion


Chinook

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A little deformation zone magic over the Palmer Divide tonight! 3.5" just east of Castle Rock and still coming down steadily. 

 

NWS has issued a Winter WX advisory for 2"-5". I had a gut feeling earlier in the week one of these next two systems would out produce models.  

 

Congrats. The band has stayed just to the south and east of me all evening...got maybe .5" here. Looks like DEN has been right in the middle of it for the past few hours.

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That -29 at the Greeley airport is insane.

Greeley Airport is in a small valley near one of the rivers. It is regularly colder with the morning lows than Greeley city on nights with good radiational cooling. It is particularly interesting in these very cold conditions. It also gets to 99 degrees quite often compared to other places around here.

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Greeley Airport is in a small valley near one of the rivers. It is regularly colder with the morning lows than Greeley city on nights with good radiational cooling. It is particularly interesting in these very cold conditions. It also gets to 99 degrees quite often compared to other places around here.

 

Oh, no doubt. Definitely an ideal location for radiational cooling. 

 

However, -29 appears to be pretty impressive even for that location. I'm not sure when the last time they got that cold was, but that was colder than they got with the Feb 2014 cold wave and anything else in recent years.

 

I can't find their records back more than a few years on the NWS site, any idea?

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Since 2011, there have been F6 type climate forms for FNL, GXY, and some other airports in the Boulder/Denver CWA. They do not have F6 climate forms before October 2011 for these locations. The rest of official or semi-official climate records for several cities are based on co-op observers. You can click on NOWDATA on the climate page to find out more historical information, which is mainly from co-op data.

 

Looks like we could get some snow tomorrow night with the cold front. I think trace-2" is possible for northern Colorado. Actually the NWS has around 1-4" for our area, generically.

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Since 2011, there have been F6 type climate forms for FNL, GXY, and some other airports in the Boulder/Denver CWA. They do not have F6 climate forms before October 2011 for these locations. The rest of official or semi-official climate records for several cities are based on co-op observers. You can click on NOWDATA on the climate page to find out more historical information, which is mainly from co-op data.

 

Looks like we could get some snow tomorrow night with the cold front. I think trace-2" is possible for northern Colorado. Actually the NWS has around 1-4" for our area, generically.

 

Right, yeah that's what I mean...there's co-op date for pre-2011, but I don't see any for the Greeley airport.

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Talking about the northern Rockies (near the MT/Canada border), the 4km NAM (and NWS forecasts) show something like 30-40" in the next 3 days east of Kalispell, MT.

 

strongly-worded quote from NWS Missoula weather story

 

 

An extremely powerful winter storm will pound the Northern Rockies with an unrelenting period of heavy snow that will begin tonight and is expected to persist in many areas through Tuesday evening. Significant impacts to travel, commerce and public safety are likely due to the anticipated transition from powdery snow to heavy, wet snow over the next twenty-four hours.

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Right now, Fort Collins has very slippery surfaces with freezing drizzle that happened over a few hours overnight. We still have fog and very light freezing drizzle. A few graupel pellets froze onto the layer of frozen drizzle.

 

 

 

Some higher snow amounts happened with a stationary snow band around Colorado Springs and the Palmer Divide:

 

  0730 AM     SNOW             6 SSW CALHAN            38.95N 104.34W  01/12/2015  M8.1 INCH        EL PASO            CO   TRAINED SPOTTER     0525 AM     SNOW             4 W ELLICOTT            38.84N 104.46W  01/12/2015  M7.0 INCH        EL PASO            CO   TRAINED SPOTTER                 0720 PM 01/11/15 TO 0525 AM 01/12/15       0100 AM     SNOW             PETERSON AFB            38.83N 104.70W  01/12/2015  M5.5 INCH        EL PASO            CO   CITY OFFICIAL         1045 PM     SNOW             5 NNW PETERSON AFB      38.89N 104.74W  01/11/2015  M5.0 INCH        EL PASO            CO   TRAINED SPOTTER     1029 PM     SNOW             4 NW PETERSON AFB       38.88N 104.74W  01/11/2015  M4.5 INCH        EL PASO            CO   TRAINED SPOTTER     1018 PM     SNOW             4 WSW FALCON            38.90N 104.68W  01/11/2015  M5.0 INCH        EL PASO            CO   TRAINED SPOTTER      
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In the last 42 hours, the temperature variation at both DIA and Centennial (APA) has been only 9 degrees, from 22 to 31. Likely will extend this substantially if we can avoid any sun before it gets dark. Must be some kind of new Front Range record for dreariness. The Drear Index is about as high as it gets.

 

(proposed equation: ((sky cover in tenths)/10) x (length of time in hours) x 1/(max temp-min temp) * abs(temp(F)-32) )

 

 

assuming that 32 F is the maximally dreary temperature

 

Suggestions for incorporating drizzle and/or fog into the equation welcome.

 

I would have added some calculus but forgot how, it's been a while...

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Here's a look at the big picture in terms of snow liquid equivalent.  Seems that CO and UT have done ok.  The Sierras, Pac NW and high desert SW (think Flagstaff) have all performed terribly so far. 

 

Overall a good year for WY and MT, with not too many big storms but many steady light snows associated with frontal passages if I recall correctly.

 

post-378-0-17356700-1421275544_thumb.gif

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