It is time to take a time out from what the models are saying in the short term and expand our horizons out a little further. At the beginning of the season, actually, back in late September and early October, I boldly proclaimed that I was expecting an average winter for snowfall in the Durango area (totaling 60-70 inches in town and 100-120 inches at mid-elevations for the entire winter). I referenced the 77-78 winter as well as the 09-10 winter and said that areas south of 160 would see more snow than usual this year and that we would have a late spring.
So far so good, but I think I am going to be wrong. I now believe we are going to be above average in town and at mid elevations. Looking at the longterm model forecasts from the Euro weeklies and the CFS version 2 the next 6 weeks agree on below average temperatures and above average precipitation. What is interesting is the CFS v2 model usually is warm and dry biased.
We will start with 10 days, then 16 days then 6 weeks.
Euro 10 day total 10-1 snowfall
GFS 10 day
CFS precipitation above average percentage next 10 days
CFS 10 day below average temps
GFS 16 day snow forecast
CFS 6 week temps below average
CFS 6 week precip above average
Euro 46 day temps below average
46 day snow at 10-1. For higher elevations it is literally off the chart, you can get a better idea from the next slide showing the total precip.
Euro 46 day precip above average precipitation totals liquid equivalent
I checked the February-May totals for 77-78 winter and if we repeated that winter the lower elevations would receive another 4 feet with the mid elevations and high elevations receiving 6-10 feet additional snow. I can’t guarantee that by any means but I can say that there are several indicators pointing in the colder and wetter than average direction.
Tomorrow I will talk about the shorter term, the Euro and GFS are similar in their next outlook for 10 days but they arrive there in very, very different ways. Hopefully, tomorrow they will be closer to agreeing what route they are going to take!
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Here is the CFSv2 for the next 2 weeks
Where is the best source for snowfall data? Especially in town… Thanks!
There is not a great source of information on snowfall. The airport is not reflective of in town amounts. There is one site that is a bit complicated to figure out, however, its all voluntary and if someone decides to take a storm or two off the data is not accurate. In my experience, during a good snowfall year, people get complacent about measuring. The wrcc used to do a great job keeping track of it in Durango. However, they stopped physically measuring snow in 2010 and only track precipitation and they use non-descript maps to display their data. Here is a link to the site I mentioned. http://scacis.rcc-acis.org/