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Mountain West Discussion


Chinook
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Next time frame is 11/6-11/10 for NM/CO (10/20, +17-21 days) with the low today SE of Kamchatka. This one is way south of the other one, likely better for NM. The storm in a week by Kamchatka is shown to move that stupid North Pacific high around 10/27.  That's your big mid-Nov pattern change if it verifies.

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On 10/20/2021 at 5:40 PM, raindancewx said:

Next time frame is 11/6-11/10 for NM/CO (10/20, +17-21 days) with the low today SE of Kamchatka. This one is way south of the other one, likely better for NM. The storm in a week by Kamchatka is shown to move that stupid North Pacific high around 10/27.  That's your big mid-Nov pattern change if it verifies.

 

Have these lows been hitting, just tracking north of my selfish wants and needs here in CO? (Low ejecting into the plains has been north vs last spring's mega-storm. Thus upslope winds have favored WY vs CO)

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It's likely the time of year means the lows won't be as far south as last year at the same position. But the later we get into the season with the more southerly tracks, the more similar the tracks should be to the Bering Sea Rule idealized spot. The -PDO may also support a northerly track deep relative to normal, but not sure about that yet.

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Hi, if this topic is not appropriate for your forum please remove, or tell me to bugger off.

 
I am from North Carolina and follow the forums for that region closely for hurricane season and during potential winter weather events. I am not a learned person in meteorology, but love reading the forums when big events are forthcoming. There are a ton of highly educated/informed people that give great insight.
 
The insight is why I'm here in your forum.  My family is looking to go to Steamboat the week before Christmas this year to ski and I've been told the snow pack/conditions can be iffy that early in the season. Do any of you have any suggestions/ thoughts on the long range forecast this year for how things are setting up for snow from now to the middle of December in that area of Colorado? I can't seem to find any real good information on it. Thanks for any thoughts you may be able to share on anticipated weather for that area!
 
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12 hours ago, R. Venson said:

Hi, if this topic is not appropriate for your forum please remove, or tell me to bugger off.

 
I am from North Carolina and follow the forums for that region closely for hurricane season and during potential winter weather events. I am not a learned person in meteorology, but love reading the forums when big events are forthcoming. There are a ton of highly educated/informed people that give great insight.
 
The insight is why I'm here in your forum.  My family is looking to go to Steamboat the week before Christmas this year to ski and I've been told the snow pack/conditions can be iffy that early in the season. Do any of you have any suggestions/ thoughts on the long range forecast this year for how things are setting up for snow from now to the middle of December in that area of Colorado? I can't seem to find any real good information on it. Thanks for any thoughts you may be able to share on anticipated weather for that area!
 

Heck, I got a bunch of days in at Beech Mountain in early December many years ago, not bad really. Wet oak leaves are as slippery as packed powder if you play it right. :)

Best resource IMHO is opensnow.com for mountain-specific weather and long range hints (that you may have to pay for, but may be worth it). Biggest thing about early snow here is that Oct-Jan is the driest time of year in CO. The big storms typically hit in Feb-April. But the 'Boat is good about making snow, to justify its $200/day price tag for a ticket.

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Actually think the first half of November may be fairly active. That 28 point SOI drop is showing up for 11/2 as a system for NM or CO. Then the big low south of the last one by Kamchatka on 10/20 should be something 11/6-11/10, and then we've been seeing recurring precipitation every 45-days (with cold) for three cycles now. Last cycle time was 9/30. So next time is likely 11/15 or so.

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On 10/24/2021 at 9:50 PM, raindancewx said:

Image

This is probably something big for early November - crashes over 10 points are rare for a single day. This is nearly 30.

Roughly day 7 or 8 at this point - but nice to see the GFS / Euro at least occasionally showing something in the SOI crash +10 day range.

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On 10/25/2021 at 9:34 PM, mayjawintastawm said:

It's been 41 days since Denver saw 0.1" or more in a day, and 123 days since we've seen 0.25" or more. Any bets on when the next of these will happen? I'll wager 11/7 for 0.1" and 11/25 for 0.25", mainly wild guesses (that may be optimistic).

and good to be wrong... though DEN still has its streak going, most of the metro area saw a nice 0.1-0.2" last evening. Felt downright weird walking around in it.

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Temperatures have fallen from 72 degrees on Friday to only a high of 39 degrees this afternoon. That's quite a drop of temperatures, but the cold front was not too interesting. There are a few areas of rain/snow/virga on radar right now. Most areas in northern Colorado could get some very light rain or snow, up to 0.1" in the next couple of days. The northern mountains should get some QPF values of 0.5"-1.0" over the next few days. I have taken a few pictures of lenticular clouds and tree colors. The trees have been nice.  Here is a distinct lenticular cloud from 10/22.

Longer-term forecasts just mostly have a warm-up, so not too much to talk about.

Our area will finish at 2.0-3.0F above average for October, so pretty decently above average. Total precipitation was very low for me, at 0.12" unless some rain shower happens before midnight.

aTVCJ9Y.jpg

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This is for Denver for 1931-2021, July-Oct. Impressive that you're actually running much drier than Albuquerque. We've had over 3 inches of rain in that time frame. When I ran snow totals for my forecast this year, it did look kind of below average for the Front Range cities, with Western Colorado doing much better generally.

Denver: July-October 1931-2021

1 2021-10-31 0.97 0
2 1962-10-31 1.24 0
3 1948-10-31 1.45 0
4 1964-10-31 1.58 0
5 1934-10-31 1.73 0
6 2016-10-31 1.83 0
7 1939-10-31 1.88 0
8 1943-10-31 2.07 0
9 2003-10-31 2.12 0
10 1978-10-31 2.32 0
11 2020-10-31 2.49 0
12 1950-10-31 2.53 0
13 1937-10-31 2.69 0
14 1933-10-31 2.92 0
15 1944-10-31 2.93 0
16 1994-10-31 3.00 0
17 2018-10-31 3.13 0
18 1932-10-31 3.15 0
19 1952-10-31 3.19 0
20 1981-10-31 3.20 0
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FYI - I posted the message below at the end of August for the Fort Collins area.  For this area, the precipitation situation for September and October did not improve any.  After a solid wet spring this year, the northern front range weather pattern just flipped to hot and very dry.  Here we are now in November and no sign of any change in the pattern.  When we have consecutive years of drought in the state the water situation can get ugly.  Let’s hope for a positive change…
 

The months of June, July and August have truly been on a hot and drying trend for several years in the Fort Collins area, specifically (this likely extends to much broader area but I'm talking about the FC area where I live).  I recently dug into historical weather records for FC - my source is the Western Regional Climate Center (wrcc.dri.edu).  What I found was pretty eye-opening.

The long-term mean for total precip. for June-July-Aug for FC is 4.75".  The last year FC had greater than average precip for these months was 2009 - over a decade ago.  In fact going back over 110 years of records, all decades up to the 2010's featured at least one year (and generally multiple years) that exceeded the average precip. for June-July-Aug. This includes the droughty 1930's and 1950's.  In case you're interested the wettest year I found for these months was 1997 at 14.79" and the driest was 1924 at .48".  I did not delve into the temperature records but its not going out on a limb to say its been damn hot overall (I would say starting 2000).

Barring a miracle in the next few days, this year in FC the precip for June-July-Aug will also be well below average at 1.77".  This is actually LESS than last year, the big fire year.  Again this is for FC - your mileage may vary at your location.

What does the future hold? Who knows, but the current trend for summer precip and temps is not encouraging. 

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There is an upper level ridge in the West, such that 0C is above 700 mb all over the West, over to California. The 0C isotherm is much closer to sea level in the East. Maybe I should post one of these per day. This is a 3000 mile wide cross section that makes the Rocky Mountains look close to the Appalachians

WTKHZ56.png

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Thanks Chinook for posting that graph.  It is kinda over my head as to how to interpret it.  However, when I see words like high pressure ridge all over the west it does not sound like good news for our region - at least for those of us who are ready to see some storms roll in.  I guess just enjoy the return of late summer weather for the next several days.  Maybe in December we'll see a more positive change in the weather pattern?

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On 11/4/2021 at 6:58 PM, raindancewx said:

This is for Denver for 1931-2021, July-Oct. Impressive that you're actually running much drier than Albuquerque. We've had over 3 inches of rain in that time frame. When I ran snow totals for my forecast this year, it did look kind of below average for the Front Range cities, with Western Colorado doing much better generally.

Denver: July-October 1931-2021

1 2021-10-31 0.97 0
2 1962-10-31 1.24 0
3 1948-10-31 1.45 0
4 1964-10-31 1.58 0
5 1934-10-31 1.73 0
6 2016-10-31 1.83 0
7 1939-10-31 1.88 0
8 1943-10-31 2.07 0
9 2003-10-31 2.12 0
10 1978-10-31 2.32 0
11 2020-10-31 2.49 0
12 1950-10-31 2.53 0
13 1937-10-31 2.69 0
14 1933-10-31 2.92 0
15 1944-10-31 2.93 0
16 1994-10-31 3.00 0
17 2018-10-31 3.13 0
18 1932-10-31 3.15 0
19 1952-10-31 3.19 0
20 1981-10-31 3.20 0

Thanks raindancewx! How/where do you get these data? Would love to play around with them some.

 

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20 hours ago, mayjawintastawm said:

Also- these conversations are pretty great and the nerd index is an order of magnitude higher than most other subforums, just sayin'... :)

If we could only make some posts about H2O coming out of the air, rather than drought, this discussion would be great. 

I got my plane ticket to go see my family in Ohio. It is the first time in 2 years. I wonder if Raindancewx can beat the models and tell me if it going to snow when I go on my journeys. Of course, I won't share detailed personal information.

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The 12z GFS is getting me very strongly concerned for the Northern Plains, very high impact storm next weekend for the area with Blizzard conditions.

Parts of Western Nebraska will get up to 40 inches of snow with 9 to 12 Feet snowdrifts, the Dakotas & parts of Minnesota will have 2-3 Feet of snow with 5-8 Feet Snowdrifts.

Screenshot-2021-11-08-at-12.02.45-PM.png
 

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2 hours ago, Iceresistance said:

The 12z GFS is getting me very strongly concerned for the Northern Plains, very high impact storm next weekend for the area with Blizzard conditions.

Parts of Western Nebraska will get up to 40 inches of snow with 9 to 12 Feet snowdrifts, the Dakotas & parts of Minnesota will have 2-3 Feet of snow with 5-8 Feet Snowdrifts.

Screenshot-2021-11-08-at-12.02.45-PM.png
 

I'll believe there may be a storm if it still shows early next week, but the GFS is overboard usually...especially at this range.  I wouldn't take any of it verbatim.

 

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