An interesting thing happened this afternoon when the latest GFS model run came out. I looked at it and knew I had seen it before. Sure enough, I looked back and found it. It was similar to the Tuesday morning GFS run for storm 1.
Here is the current GFS for storm 2.
Here is the Tuesday morning run for storm 1.
There are some subtle differences, but you gotta admit they look a lot alike. They also are not far from what happened in most of La Plata County. The exception was in town Durango (although I did get a report of 5 in Skyridge). There are also many areas that exceeded these amounts. Does that mean the second storm will mimic the first storm in our area? No way to know yet, but I have been talking about the similarities for days.
I tried the same experiment with the Euro and it did not match up as well, but here is the latest Euro. The Euro yesterday trended up right before the storm so I will be hoping for that tomorrow morning.
The short term models usually bounce around until the day the storm arrives then they lock in better. They were what led to me increasing my totals for mid and higher elevations yesterday afternoon. I will be using them tomorrow to try to formulate the forecast.
Everything I had at my disposal predicted lower snow levels earlier last night. In town Durango, the changeover didn’t happen until around midnight. What I am looking at, at the moment, shows slightly lower levels earlier than the first storm, but I will feel more confident about that tomorrow.
Looking ahead the models are still trying to figure out the path of another smaller, colder storm coming Monday night. My confidence is low at this point due to inconsistencies from run to run.
Tomorrow morning the NWS will issue Winter Storm Advisories and either an Advisory or Warning for the highest elevations. I will post those early and update throughout the day.
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