1:45 pm

Recap

What a weekend, after all of yesterday I missed the big finish bonus last night, where most areas along and west of 550 got 2-3 inches in a short period of time!

Overall, the WRF model did a good job yesterday in the areas I highlighted. I second guessed it on the areas that it was showing less snow and I should not have. Purgatory got an inch and that was about all the model showed for it.

I feel like people are getting a little “snow numb”. A month ago if I mentioned we could get 10+” in town over a few days, first, you would have called me crazy, but if it happened you would have been very, very happy. After as much snow as we have had in about 2 weeks, it is getting more difficult to impress people.

I had really downplayed the weekend last week (even on Friday). Most areas got 6+” over the weekend. At my house, we ended up with just under 14″ between Saturday and Sunday. So now I am seeing 10+” predicted in town on most models by Saturday with double that in other areas and while it is impressive when I think about it, is just another couple of storms.

The last two days have shown how important the new radar system we are getting is. Around 11 am yesterday, I was nearly ready around throw in the towel on the storm, if I had accurate radar I would have known that the WRF had been little too fast moving the snow north. That is why I posted on Facebook to find out what was happening to the south. It was very valuable to get the feedback, and ultimately I decided to give the storm more time to develop and move north.

Monday night surprise?

I mentioned earlier on Facebook that you should not be surprised if you see a few flakes between now and Tuesday night when the storm should be approaching. There is a lot of moist air, especially to the south, and our ground is saturated. Storms tend to track towards something that will help sustain them. There is a disturbance evident on the northern New Mexico/Arizona border. You can clearly make it out on the image below.

Here is the deep moisture evident on the Colored Water Vapor imagery, green is wet.

 

And here is the current high-resolution satellite loop which shows the flow from the southwest.

Despite all of the ingredients being in place, the models do not show this translating into any precipitation, but I am still saying, we got a chance.

 

Tuesday 

In the morning the storm should be somewhere about halfway through southern Utah and Northern Arizona. As it moves closer precipitation could break out anytime, but the main action won’t come until later, likely after dark. There are some differences in the models, the GFS has now gone full-on bonkers on this first storm since it is the outlier I have left it off. If it stays that way until tomorrow morning I will highlight it tomorrow. There is much more agreement on the other models I follow.

Here is the Euro, this is liquid precip but it is easier to see the similarities to the models this way. Multiply by 10 to get snow. This the first storm total by late Wednesday.

Here is the Canadian model

Here is the short-term medium resolution NAM (North American Model) from earlier this morning.

Here is the latest NAM run (just out). I like to see the amounts stay the same or trend up right before the storm. It’s gone a bit crazy over towards Cortez, I think it is oversampling the La Platas, and the higher altitudes of Montezuma County, so Cortez don’t get too excited, yet anyway.

What happens immediately after this storm is still up in the air, but models are still locked on Thursday into Friday for what, at the moment, seems a very similar sized storm, but things may trend up between now and then. So while confidence is high, there are a lot of unknowns, if the first one comes in later and or leftovers come into play there may be areas where it will be difficult to tell when one storm leaves and the next one starts.

 

Click here to donate

 

Click here to contact me