ValpoVike Posted October 18, 2020 Share Posted October 18, 2020 Loveland should be ok, RH's there this morning have recovered to 90%+, winds should be much lighter, and the fire front is in grasses. I do think that parts of west Loveland dodged a bullet yesterday. As for our neighborhood, it has burned thru about 30% of the neighborhood and the VFD along with the IC crews are still battling. Fortunately since yesterday morning it appears to be active and not extreme. Reduced wind speed should allow aviation on it today which will help a ton. My home is furthest from the Miller Fork drainage, so I appear to be in good shape. I personally dodged a big giant bullet (so far), but others not so lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 18, 2020 Author Share Posted October 18, 2020 Our area went from 72 degrees yesterday to 40 degrees right now. Today's models have a very snowy look for the northern Plains/ northern Rockies within 10 days. You don't see this a whole lot of times in October. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 18, 2020 Share Posted October 18, 2020 Whether it's the MJO or something else, I do expect a fairly reliable series of strong cold shots to dive down the Plains/Rockies every 45 days or so. (9/9 to 10/25 is 45-days ish). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 19, 2020 Author Share Posted October 19, 2020 The GFS, Euro, and Canadian all show measurable snow in the next 7 days north of Denver. There's certainly a good chance of over 6" of snow for the north mountains. It is snowing in Iowa right now, so that's pretty early in the season for that area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValpoVike Posted October 19, 2020 Share Posted October 19, 2020 37 minutes ago, Chinook said: The GFS, Euro, and Canadian all show measurable snow in the next 7 days north of Denver. There's certainly a good chance of over 6" of snow for the north mountains. It is snowing in Iowa right now, so that's pretty early in the season for that area. We can hope. I have never wished for winter as hard as I do now, and I love snow so the bar was already set pretty high Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 21, 2020 Author Share Posted October 21, 2020 18z GFS has a bunch of snow for us on Sunday-Monday, 12z Canadian is low, but not zero, and 12z Euro is 6" + for most of Larimer County, but lower for Denver... probably still quite significant with 15:1 snow ratios at elevations higher than 5000 ft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 21, 2020 Author Share Posted October 21, 2020 Today's GFS has 7-9" for Sunday/Monday with Kuchera ratios, but today's Euro has 6-12" with 10:1 ratios. The higher mountains could get more than 20" out of this storm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 21, 2020 Share Posted October 21, 2020 This is the furthest south I've ever seen a model show snow in October. It does snow here in October some years, even in La Ninas, but it's still kind of amazing. Really does rival the September storm, as a huge temperature drop in a short time. I guess the September setup was 50 degrees cooler here, but still. Record cold in Albuquerque in October would be highs in the 30s and lows below 20 or so. The weather service has 40s for highs and some 20s lows. We did drop to 22 last October one night. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokeybandit Posted October 22, 2020 Share Posted October 22, 2020 2 hours ago, Chinook said: Today's GFS has 7-9" for Sunday/Monday with Kuchera ratios, but today's Euro has 6-12" with 10:1 ratios. The higher mountains could get more than 20" out of this storm. The higher mountains deserve it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 22, 2020 Author Share Posted October 22, 2020 7-day snow accumulation from the GEFS-mean takes the snow and cold well down into New Mexico and northwest Texas, as well as all over Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokeybandit Posted October 22, 2020 Share Posted October 22, 2020 Grandby and Estes Park seem right in the crosshairs of the East Troublesome fire. Not good at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 22, 2020 Author Share Posted October 22, 2020 It is a dark day here. The East Troublesome smoke plume is above the stratus clouds here, and whole sky appears dark orange in the middle of the day. There is about 3x as much ash as any other day-- the ash is noticeable on the sidewalks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 The progression of the pattern recently, with the -NAO collapsing into huge cold dumps in Montana sort of reminds me of late January to February 2019. You had pretty intense cold in the Midwest - briefly - in both the current setup and back then, and then basically record cold for an extended period in Montana. The period after Epsilon and the storm this week in CO/NM and the Plains is probably going to be pretty quiet. I'd expect things to get more interesting around Thanksgiving though. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finnster Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 Greetings all. Just spent a week being evacuated and got back into our house yesterday (Lory State Park area). The extent of the fires and drought conditions is unreal. I don’t know what it will take to break down the pattern of nearly constant high pressure ridges in the western US, but that pattern is certainly the main culprit for the extreme conditions. Once in a great while the pattern will relax and a storm will get through - only to be followed by a ridge re-establishing. Rinse and repeat. Of course fires are nature’s way of regenerating healthy forests. This regeneration can only happen IF there is a period of cooler temps/storminess to enable it - and as we’ve seen over the past couple decades this cannot be taken for granted. With each passing year life in the western US gets more interesting and challenging. I'm Thankful and in awe of the job the fire fighters are doing in exceptionally bad conditions. They (and all of us!) desperately need a break from this relentlessly wicked weather pattern . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 The local NWS had an interesting discussion today on the snow potential with the coming system. I usually blend the Euro, 3-km NAM and GFS to get precip totals here for Oct-May. But not in range yet for the 3-KM NAM. Precipitation will start in the northern parts of the state through the northern mountains Sunday night into Monday morning. Precipitation then spreads across much of the state during the day Monday as the jet stream increases and large scale QG lift increases. The combination of Q-vector divergence and frontogenesis in 700mb- 600mb layers will allow for banded precipitation across central and northern New Mexico. This analysis was mainly done with the 12Z GFS but looking at the ECMWF/Canadian/ICON models, there was not much difference with the GFS. The ECMWF produced quite a bit more snowfall and the ICON given its resolution produce finer detailed banded structures to the precip. So given the forcing, we really need to be careful Monday night for the possibility of impactful winter banded precip in which snowfall amounts could quickly increase. The lift in these bands could lead to much higher snowfall rates than what is forecast. And these bands are mesoscale in nature so nailing down the exact location and timing will be difficult in the next couple of days. Just realize there could be areas that get only 1-2 inches while not far away areas get 9 inches. For now we are more conservative with snowfall amounts through the end of the day Wednesday but that will be re-evaluated in the coming days. For now some of the higher mountain areas could push 12 inches of snow with anywhere from 2 to 6 inches possible in some of the lower elevations. Even the Rio Grande Valley could see 2 to 4 inches of snow during this time. The good thing is that much of the state will see very beneficial precipitation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 24, 2020 Author Share Posted October 24, 2020 From NWS Boulder 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 24, 2020 Author Share Posted October 24, 2020 The models show values that are pretty high-- even with 10:1 snow rations, and obviously higher with Kuchera snow ratios. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 The models are kind of a mess down here. Last I looked, the GFS had surface temps reaching ~32F in the city at noon, the Euro at 6 pm, and the 3-km NAM at 6 am - this all Monday. The 3-km NAM is usually pretty good with timing temperature changes here, so hoping the next set of runs are closer. The local NWS already has a winter storm watch out for a lot of New Mexico. I'd expect Albuquerque to go in a Winter Weather Advisory for 1-4" of snow for something like 3 pm Monday to 10 am Tuesday, but we'll see what they do. I'm a little hesitant to buy much more than 3 inches of snow here no matter what the models say, since the 1931-2019 record for October snow is 3.2 inches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 25, 2020 Author Share Posted October 25, 2020 Look at tonight's GFS. This is 100% absolutely nuts for lower elevations of New Mexico and West Texas and western Kansas-- up to 25" with ratios near Dalhart, TX. The weird part is, the new hurricane near Louisiana could be feeding moisture into this system by the time it gets down there. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 25, 2020 Author Share Posted October 25, 2020 The storm is going to start here soon. We may only get a trace of snow before 1:00 or 2:00AM, but then I expect more steady accumulation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 What do you make the temperature differences in the models? When I looked last night, the GFS had lows around 18 in Albuquerque, the Euro around 26, and the NAM around 22. Those are huge differences and I find that the "snow shadow" below the canyons here is often overcome when the temperatures are below 25. I'm a little concerned the models have a terrible reading on temperatures though - the local NWS had a low of 39 for this morning and it only fell to 58 with a south wind and clouds overhead. If the high is 78 instead of 73 because of that, it's just a couple more hours until the cold front kills off the heat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 25, 2020 Author Share Posted October 25, 2020 I've got heavy snow rates here. Edit: I measured 3.5". It will probably be 4.5" within 1 hour. KFNL 251856Z 35014KT 1/4SM +SN FZFG OVC004 M11/M13 A3026 RMK AO2 TWR VIS 2 SLP301 P0000 T11111133 FZRANO KFNL 251838Z 36013KT 1/4SM +SN FZFG BKN004 OVC008 M11/M13 A3025 RMK AO2 TWR VIS 2 P0000 FZRANO KFNL 251824Z 35012KT 1/4SM +SN FZFG OVC007 M11/M13 A3027 RMK AO2 TWR VIS 2 CIG 005V009 P0000 FZRANO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finnster Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Here too southwest of Bellvue. We have about 12” already - no kidding.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Met1985 Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Potomac Montana had the coldest temp in the lower 48 this morning at negative 29. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finnster Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Ok I overestimated - just measured we have 11” not 12. I tend to overestimate the size of fish I catch too 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindancewx Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 This is what I got here using the 12z runs: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 25, 2020 Author Share Posted October 25, 2020 I may have underestimated the snow at 12:00 or 12:30. I have gotten up to 6" by 2:30. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Bands giveth and bands taketh away. We got 2" earlier, not much the past 2 hours and now it is partly sunny and 15 F. Differences west of the Divide are pretty incredible: we were in Avon Fri night-Sun AM with daytime temps in the mid to upper 50s and only down to the upper 30s at night. Today it was 36 at the Eisenhower Tunnel (11K ft) at about 3 PM, then within two miles down the hill toward Georgetown it dropped 30 degrees. Was 5 in Georgetown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted October 25, 2020 Author Share Posted October 25, 2020 Snowfall was lighter for a while, but KFNL is now reporting 1/4 mile visibility, and I would say we are getting 1/2" of snow per hour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokeybandit Posted October 26, 2020 Share Posted October 26, 2020 Based on front deck/back deck measurements, I got 9" or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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