Snowpack

Before I begin here is an update on the snowpack.

So we are down just a little, but still pretty “normal” to slightly above in several areas.

Euro Long Range Forecast

I don’t know anyone who is hoping for winter to return giving us snow into May in the mountains like we had last year. So I hope this is wrong. That being said the Euro model continues to be tested to be the most accurate weather model in the world today. So I can’t flat out ignore something when I see it. It will be interesting to see Friday morning what the new run shows. Hopefully, this is all a mistake, a bad day, a wrong turn?

Twice a week, the “Euro Weekly” model produces 7, 32 and 46-day anomaly forecasts. Snow, liquid precipitation, temperatures, and low and high-pressure anomalies. Hoping to get some better insight on spring, I have been nosing around the long-range models and  I was shocked to see the 32 and 46-day snowfall forecasts for the United States. Long-range forecasts are usually unreliable to take literally. But they are based on an element of truth, in other words, they are useful in determining patterns. So while the precise number of inches of precipitation may be wrong, the pattern for lower than normal heights (low-pressure anomalies like the shades of blue I show you on the maps) is usually close to accurate.

Without further adieu here is the latest run.

Here it is zoomed in to just the Rocky Mountain region. Yes, those colors correlate to snowfall in inches.

If I back it up to 32 days through May 1st here is what it shows.

By comparing the two you can see that it is forecasting mountain snow after May 1st.

Hoping I could dismiss the Euro weekly, I just happened to pull up the 15-day snowfall forecast for Colorado from the operational GFS from last night.

Hmmm… That’s actually worse because it is only for 15 days, it shows most of it falling between the 10th-15th.

Despite the gloom and doom in the long term, I don’t see any significant weather makers on the horizon in the short term. Just a temperature tug of war. And a brush by of some mountain snow later this week. Stay tuned to see how the long-range situation plays out.

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