Mountain West- Winter

[raindancewx]

Increasingly looking like the analogs had it right for Montana/Wyoming this winter - stupid levels of cold so far.

[mayjawintastawm]

19 hours ago, snownut said:

My third winter in the west and shaping up to be more typical or maybe even above average?  11" of snow so far this month at my house.  12 - 18" forecast in tomorrows storm then strong cold to continue...  Mount Bachelor ( 21 miles from my home ) has more than a 5' base and 146" at the base so far the season.. photo from my "attempted" ski day on Sunday.. 

 

 

 

 

Gorgeous, but agreed it's really hard to ski - or for that matter move around at all- when it's dumping that hard. You'd be lost without a trace if that were to avalanche. Best to flop around and make a snowman and wait till the next morning. I am jealous!

[Chinook]

I am getting a few snowflakes here. Snow has developed near the arctic front in Wyoming, but it won't affect me much. Temps have dropped to the teens here. Yesterday it was 40-44 around here.

November average temperature here: 45.3F

December 1-13 average temperature here: 26.3F

difference: 19F

 

Saturday for DIA area : GFS says +3F at 5:00AM, -2F at 11:00AM, -1F  at 5:00PM, +3F at 11:00PM, +5F at 5:00AM Sunday

NWS :Saturday A 30 percent chance of snow before noon. Partly sunny and cold, with a high near 6.

Saturday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around -9.

[Chinook]

There's a reasonable potential for 2" or more of snow in Denver this weekend. I am just thinking this might be one of those times when it gets pretty slippery with only 2", because of the quickly dropping temperature. This looks like it be another major refresher for mountain snowpack, with the NAM now showing 2.87" of water equivalent in the Elk/Sawatch Ranges.

[Chinook]

This is 5PM Saturday.

[Chinook]

You might think from the IR satellite that Utah had a huge thunderstorm at this time, but really it is a thick deck of clouds that are high, but not precipitating much. That's what happens when the Sierra Nevada cuts out the low level moisture.

[Chinook]

breaking the inversion... These are ASOS observations. It is 50 degrees at Kremmling (7400 ft) and about 30 here at my house.

[Chinook]

Snow will fall from California to Massachusetts within the next several hours!

[mayjawintastawm]

funky temps: 50 when I got up early this AM, then dropped to low 20s by 10 AM, now back up to 48. Still 29 at DIA. The shallow cold air is just sloshing around before it consolidates later on.

[Chinook]

The cold air never really sloshed here. It was 34 here yesterday when it was 64 at Boulder, and even 57 at Fort Collins-Loveland airport. Today it was just 32ish, now colder. I took a quick pic of the foothills before the deep freeze sets in. I have been so busy that I haven't even been to a mountain road in a long time. By this time tomorrow the steep roads near the reservoir will be impassible for my car.

[Chinook]

It is snowing now. The radar went from nothing to 30dBz pretty quick.

[Chinook]

It is snowing so hard it is kind of hard to take pictures

[Chinook]

I got 4". looks like Denver got slammed with heavy snow late at night. Local storm reports show 4-11" in Denver.

[Chinook]

South Dakota/ Montana/ Saskatchewan wind chills at 8AM Central
 

CITY           SKY/WX    TMP DP  RH WIND       PRES   REMARKS  
BILLINGS       CLOUDY   -15 -20  78 SW15      30.03S WCI -39            
GREAT FALLS    CLOUDY   -12 -20  67 S21       29.95F WCI -38            
REGINA         CRYSTALS -26 -31  75 SW5       30.11S WCI -40            
ESTEVAN        CLEAR    -29 -35  75 W6        30.13R WCI -46    

 

CITY           SKY/WX    TMP DP  RH WIND       PRES   REMARKS  
ABERDEEN       CLOUDY    -6 -14  68 N13       30.15R WCI -25            
MOBRIDGE       CLOUDY   -11 -19  68 NW12      30.12R WCI -31            
BUFFALO          N/A    -21 -25  81 W13       29.97F WCI -44            
RAPID CITY     CLOUDY   -11 -19  68 NW15      30.06R WCI -33            
GLASGOW        PTCLDY   -25 -29  81 S8        30.14R WCI -45            
SIDNEY         CLOUDY   -25 -31  73 SW5       30.19R WCI -39            
WOLF POINT     CLOUDY   -32  32 100 W6        30.20S WCI -50            
GLENDIVE       PTCLDY   -19 -25  73 S5        30.14S WCI -32            
MILES CITY     CLOUDY   -21 -26  77 SW5       30.15R WCI -34            
BAKER          CLOUDY   -21 -26  77 NW8       30.07S WCI -40  

 

[mayjawintastawm]

Brr. -5.0 F now. Got 7.0" of snow, right on the edge of the (somewhat) heavier stuff. No problem to shovel though, at least 15:1 if not higher.  Was a pretty nice day to be outside as long as you had enough insulation, no wind. Back to mild and meh in another couple of days. Can't wait to get up to the mountains after Christmas.

[Mercurial]

It's been pretty cold.  

[Mercurial]

West Yellowstone was at -43 last night, evidently.  Wonder what their minimum wind chill was.  Also reporting 31 inches of snow OTG.  My favorite climo in the CONUS.

[raindancewx]

With the possible exception of maybe Jan 15-Feb 15, I think this is a pretty frigid pattern for Montana, to me it's where the coldest anomalies will be centered overall for the winter. I do think the East gets cold for about a month at some point and the Northwest thaws, but a lot of the years I like are frigid in March in Montana.

I like January as pretty cold overall for the West, but it's probably going to be more like Dec 20 - Jan 20 or so as the coldest period rather than an actual calendar month. 

February is the wild card, as I think it is largely a repeat of the November pattern, but maybe a lot colder in areas where lots of snow has already fallen. It rained so much here in Nov that when it did get cold, it stuck around since the sun had to fight the wet ground first before it could take on the cold air.

[Chinook]

There's a possibility of snow on Dec 24/25 here at the Front Range. I will be gone though.

Edit Note: the 12z Euro has some snow for northern Colorado, and then a major snowstorm going toward Minneapolis. The 18z GFS has 7-8" for northern Colorado, major snowstorm going up toward Minneapolis. On Christmas.  I expect things will change on this storm, so I don't count on seeing snow. Oh wait, I won't be here.

[Chinook]

Fort Collins reached -9.1F on the electronic thermometer at exactly midnight. If Fort Collins went by the midnight-to-midnight rule, this -9F reading would count as the low for both days. But Fort Collins-CSU temperature records go from 7PM to 7PM, so it will only count as the low on Dec. 18th. (today) A low of -4F is in the books for Dec. 17th. This wacky 7PM-7PM rule also skews the high temperature for Dec. 17th (yesterday) which should have been 5F(or perhaps a little different), but was recorded as 16F because that was the temperature on Friday at 7PM. On some of the very cold days, the sunshine skews the high temperature, done with analog thermometers in the white ventilated box. The ventilation slats let too in much sunshine that reflects off the snow.

 

Denver International Airport had 12.2" of snow on the 16th-17th!!!! It doesn't really fit with the CoCoRAHS observations of 6" near there. New record low of -15F for the 17th , high temp was 3F. Dang it, Denver and Boulder always beat me on snow over the season.

[mayjawintastawm]

Yeah, 12.2" doesn't go with any of the spotter reports in that area either. 

The white ventilated boxes are cute and I can remember them as "real" weather stations ever since I was little a long time ago... but isn't it time they graduated to something less prone to error?

[snownut]

Amazing December here in Central Oregon.  Blue bird break from the storms yesterday.  a 24 hour thaw here at my house with a bit of rain will settle the 20" snow pack here.  Couple more feet in the high country this week.  

[Chinook]

sunset pic a few minutes

[Chinook]

It has been exactly 10 yrs since I saw a real blizzard here, December 20 2006.

[mayjawintastawm]

that's right, you missed 3/23 this year which was the only time in decades that I have been really unnerved while driving, in a whiteout near DIA.

[Chinook]

There haven't been a lot of times in my life when then wind was 40mph in the city when snowing and roughly 1/4 mile visibility.  I actually got plenty of snow on March 23rd, 2016. You might have seen much more wind than I did on that day. I am just saying that December 20-21, 2006 was the best blizzard I've ever seen in my life since I was a baby. I was in the midwest Blizzard of 1978, in MI,  when I was too young to remember. I must say though, I drove through a ground blizzard in Nebraska 6 years ago, without any traction problems! The snow wasn't sticking onto the road.  If I had lived a house that was 10 miles east of Fort Collins, then I might have seen blizzard conditions a few times in the last 10 years. There are no trees and the wind can get to 40mph much more easily.

Today it is much warmer and briefly got to 47 degrees.

On Christmas, the wind may get up to gale force around here, due to that strong low pressure system. 700mb winds could be 50kt with a strong pressure gradient at the surface. I am not really sure if this will be an issue, but I won't be here on Christmas day.

[mayjawintastawm]

3/23 was plenty windy out by DIA, peak gusts to the mid 50s.

My benchmark was the New England Blizzard of '78, when I was 12. That storm really got me hooked on weather, as it did a lot of New England meteorologists. A solid 3 feet of snow over 3 days, coastal flooding, multiple deaths (not fun), hundreds of cars stuck on (now I-95) Rt 128 near Boston needing snowmobile rescues, and no school for 2 solid weeks. I actually still have a vial of water from it in a box in my basement. We jumped off our roof into a 5 foot high drift... that was fun. THAT was a storm. Though people say it would have less of an impact now because infrastructure, forecasting and emergency response are better.  1978 was quite a year! I remember a couple weeks later getting a tour of a little startup in the next town over called WSI, by a met who my parents knew. Yeah, THAT WSI. He talked about how they were predicting something 7 days out, which was crystal ball territory at that time, but were not sure enough (nor famous enough yet) to have an impact.

The Christmas system looks to be something at least, though doesn't look like it's accompanied by any QPF on the models... ?? would be nice.

[Chinook]

I have a subscription to Eurowx, that I will probably do that subscription for winter months only. (I got tired of Wunderground's map system, which basically crapped out this month.) The 12z Euro had 1-4" from Denver, northward to eastern Wyoming. The 00z Euro reduced that to 1/2" to 1" for most CO cities, but 2-6" in eastern Wyoming. Note, for those of you interested in the northland of Minnesota and North Dakota, the Euro still has 11"-27" of snow for North Dakota with this system, and it has more snow than the GFS does for Minneapolis.

[Chinook]

High wind reports today in northern Colorado, also Colorado Springs (KAFF, US Air Force Academy, had a gust of 70mph) and high winds in SE Wyoming.

[Chinook]

storm reports from the northern part of the country yesterday (does not include reports from CYS or southern/eastern Nebraska, or Utah)

 

radar image, highlighting a blizzard report from Bismarck Airport employees