Before I jump into the current weather. Here is another common question regarding the weather maps. I know even the experienced map readers have wondered this.
“Jeff why don’t you put a star on Durango or circle Purgatory.” I had the same idea, and a follower of mine who is a coder actually did some initial markups for me. As it turns out, the terms of service of every provider I have looked at expressly prohibits me from doing so. There are probably exceptions out there, based on the licensing one obtains. I have not looked too deeply into that, but I do know that a commercial unlimited license for the European model exceeds $200,000.00
The Latest
There was a delay in the onset of precipitation overnight, to their credit it was picked up by the Euro and GFS model, but with the delay between the model run times and the data output, it was too late for me to update my forecast. This is a problem with modeling and reality with weak storms. To compare it to bowling (and I have no idea why I am using that reference), a weak storm is like having only one roll, one turn, to turn in your highest total pins in one frame. A large storm is like having 10 rolls to turn in your highest average frame.
So where does that leave us? The snow that does fall will be light and I am hesitant to consider more than 1-3 inches of snow total for the resort areas, it will be difficult for snow to accumulate. Here is the latest high-resolution guidance for total precipitation to the last drop on Monday.
As far as the lower elevations go, with the delay in the trough moving through we may actually see some convective development, especially if we can see the sun peak through between 1-3pm. Please let me know if you hear some thunder or get some graupel.
As Spring progresses I will be talking more in-depth about CAPE which stands for Convective Available Potential Energy. In a nutshell, the higher the CAPE value, the better the chance of thunderstorms and severe weather. Here is a snapshot of the CAPE values at 2 pm. 
The response to Saturday’s post about the season end contest has been incredible! I am going to continue to highlight it because so far only 1,500 have read it, I want to make sure everyone who wants to participate gets a chance. If you have not yet read it, here it is: End Of The Season Announcement-The Contest
Click here and donate for a chance to win!
Click here to contact
we had a great thunder/lightning/graupel in the LPC (Mayday) last night around 9-9:30pm it was awesome! Although the dogs didn’t think so. Ken Fagerlin
Hi (I don’t know your name),
I have a suggestion regarding providing landmarks (or indicating where town is) on the weather maps you are posting. To avoid violating the user terms maybe you could post a separate, same size/scale, map (that has the county outlines, etc as those you are posting) and landmarks can be added to it for reference. (i.e. locations of cities and towns, rivers, Mtn ranges, highways, etc.). I have no idea if that would be a massive undertaking but it seems like a good idea from a high level perspective.
Best Regards,
Jason Chapman
Sent from my iPhone
Jason, I have had that up since day one. Here is a link to the page on the website. https://durangoweatherguy.com/reference-map-of-county/