Mountain West Discussion

[BlizzardWx]

Finally a few dry days, its been crazy wet for a while. March 1-April 16 at my place had 8.48" of precipitation. 

For the winter I had 76.3" of snow. 

[raindancewx]

Mountaintops are getting 1-3 feet of snow with the storm today in New Mexico. There were huge SOI drops from 4/9-4/13, so the storm today is consistent with the time frame expected.

Wettest March since 2005 in Albuquerque, wettest April since 2007 - and we may beat 2007 in an hour or two. Snow pack is spectacular on some of the mountains in the north.

[ValpoVike]

Wow that is crazy northeast of Taos.  1133%...

 

[raindancewx]

Snow pack is pretty good right now for most of the West. New Mexico has a three week window left for meaningful snow above 8,000 feet, after mid-May, it will be difficult for even a few inches below 11,000-13,000 feet.

[Chinook]

I was thinking about starting the summer discussion thread, and then I saw the GFS and Canadian that have accumulating snow for me.

[raindancewx]

Amazing how much big storms in Spring help with the snow pack.

[Chinook]

Winter storm watch issued for the foothills above 6000 ft. Snow predicted for lower elevations

[snowfan789]

On 4/26/2019 at 8:02 PM, raindancewx said:

Amazing how much big storms in Spring help with the snow pack.

It was a good winter. The spring has been quite underwhelming for most of the CO mountains.

[Chinook]

Storm update: 

My place got 4.5" to 5" of snow on Monday and today. Possible water equivalent of 0.50" - 0.55". Today, we had drizzle and fog, a snow shower in the afternoon, and drizzle. Trace of snow, possibly measurable drizzle in some places of 0.02-0.04". It is so amazing that we had snowflakes in the afternoon, even after the main storm system was gone. The average high temp is about 70 at this time of year.

[raindancewx]

I haven't looked for the Front Range, but if you turn last snowfall dates into data here, there is a definitely a meaningfully higher cluster of late snows in low-solar years. The effect peaks if you use 55-sunspots per year, July-June, above/below, and then look at last snowfall dates. Even in Albuquerque there is a ~33% frequency of measurable snow after 4/12 in low solar years, only ~9% in all others, and both data sets have over 30 years at the same location. We had snow here on 4/29/17 during the late morning, around 11 am. Snow was so heavy on the other side of the mountains it took out trees. If you use a difference in proportions test, you get a p value of around 0.01 for the hypothesis that the late snows are equally frequent in high / low solar years...so I reject it.

I'd be very curious to see snow maps for the 4/29/17 blizzard and the current storm side by side. It is almost to the day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/05/01/western-plains-blinded-by-historic-late-spring-blizzard-photos/