First Storm

Over the last 24 hours, the models have trended up slightly for the first storm arriving after dark on Monday. This is good news for Telluride/Red Mountain/Ouray areas, I think Telluride and Red Mountain should be able to steal 6-12″ out of this first storm. Northern Dolores could see 4-8″. Purgatory may luck out with 3-6″, Wolf Creek 6-12″. Mid elevations could see a couple inches, with a dusting in town. Tomorrow I will try to clean these numbers up.

The system will move out late on Tuesday. I am going to do the maps with liquid-equivalent because IMO the scales are easier to match up. At the moment, both storms appear to be an all snow event. I am going to talk about accumulations today, it is a little too early to be doing this for the second storm, but what I am seeing is incredible and I want to share it with you, just remember these can and likely will change, so only rely upon my most recent post.

When looking at these maps, you need to convert the liquid to snow, this varies by elevation: Above 8,800′ multiply by 14 to convert to the snow totals. Between 7,200′-8,500′ use 12, below 7,200 multiply by 10. These are very conservative ratios for the first storm.

Here are the GFS liquid-equivalent totals for the first storm

Here is the local view of the GFS totals

And here are the Euro’s liquid-equivalent totals for the first storm

Here is the local view

Again above 8,800′ multiply by 14 to convert to the snow totals. Between 7,200′-8,500′ use 12, below 7,200 multiply by 10.

Storm Two

The other changes I have seen  over the last 24 hours have been with the timing of the system, snow will still start late Wednesday and unless the models slow it further it should be snowing everywhere on Thanksgiving morning, but the heaviest precip (the meat of the storm) won’t move through until late Thursday night into Friday. This does not mean we won’t have heavy snow Thursday, it just means that there will be heavier snow late Thursday and Friday. By heavier, I mean travel may be impossible.  Again, we will likely see some more changes, over the years as you know these storms tend to slow down.

Here are the Euro totals, they are up from the last 2 runs but down from 24 hours ago.

Euro liquid-equivalent totals for the second storm

And here are the zoomed-in totals for a local view

On to the GFS here are the liquid-equivalent totals for the second storm

 

 

Local view

 

I think that is easier to read than this, keep in mind this is 10-1 as well.

As you can see there are some differences between the two models, then there is the Canadian, which has decided all of a sudden a third storm will come through on Saturday into Sunday.  I just can’t take it seriously but it has double to triple the amounts that the GFS has with the two extra days of snow. For now, I am going to ignore and see where the Euro trends, it will be a while before I believe the GFS over the Euro.

For now, it looks like there may be a travel window on Wednesday before things get too crazy. That does not mean clear, it just means it may not be too bad.

Make sure you keep up to date on this second storm, I will post every day this week, Wednesday I will dig into timing, similar to what I did yesterday so you can see the snapshots of what conditions to expect.

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