10 am
I really enjoyed this last storm, especially the squalls that came throughout the day yesterday. The last 5 days have been great for the snowpack, Silverton Mountain had 50 inches, Purgatory 26 and Wolf Creek 37 inches. Some of the lower elevations missed out and Telluride did not get the North and Northwest flow that the models promised at the end of the storm but still posted 24 inches in the same time period.
The next chance for snow is Saturday night, at the moment if it does come through it looks like it will mainly focus on areas above 8,500′ with a couple of inches and if we are lucky a dusting everywhere else, it will still be cold enough for all snow. Then sometime later on Monday, another storm will come through, it looks like a quick mover and it could drop a few more inches (likely 6 or less) above 8,500′ with 1-4 inches in other areas.
As that is happening a cold potent storm will be headed to the Pacific coast after a journey down from the Bering Sea. Meanwhile, near Hawaii, a strong area of low pressure will pump the atmosphere with sub-tropical moisture in a counter-clockwise flow. The storm coming into California will absorb that moisture and dump several feet of snow in the high Sierra. The models diverge on how warm that air will be when it arrives around Valentine’s day (Thursday). Here is what that looks like:
I think this is self-explanatory but I tried to demonstrate the circulation. Also note the storm west of the Aleutians, that could be the next storm to do something similar around the 20th.
The Euro last night showed a near perfect scenario with the snow level between 6,000 and 6,500 feet. Here is the regional view, this shows you some triple digit accumulations over the next 10 days for California.
Here is Colorado
The GFS is still trying to make up its mind
Last night
This morning
This far out there is no way to even tell if the two systems will collide, let alone produce and we should expect the models to flip and flop over the coming days before (hopefully) converging on a solution by the weekend.
Stay tuned!
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