Published Saturday at 8:45 am
I hope everyone had a great day yesterday! Since very little had changed with the models I decided to give myself the day off.
I am very confident that this system will start to change our weather beginning Sunday night. Here is the approximate location of the system right now, I circled it in red.
The blue is indicating that the area is an anomaly of low pressure, it does not indicate surface temperatures.
The models continue to support the idea that it will continue to the south until it comes onshore late Sunday on the Central California coastline. This will flatten our ridge of high pressure and send some moisture in zonal flow to our area late Sunday night into Monday morning.
My Take
Some of the 550 and 160 pass areas may not stop snowing until late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. There may be a few lulls and periods of lighter snow during this time. This is not looking like the massive system it was several days ago. It does look like the mountains will get 8 to 20 inches over the 3 day period and I do expect a Winter Storm Watch will be issued within the next 24 hours.
The mid-elevations should see less snow, and a rain-snow mix is possible below 7,200 feet on Monday with rain below 6,500 feet. Early indications look like 2 to 6 inches for the mid-elevations with 3 inches or less for lower elevations. Monday night the heaviest precipitation should arrive and snow should fall across the entire forecast area.
Low elevation precipitation is still a challenge in the forecast. This is disappointing but we will take whatever we can get. I don’t have a lot of faith in what I am seeing on the weather model maps right now so I will hold off from posting them today. I feel like we will see a bump up in precipitation amounts as the storm comes inland.
If anyone is traveling mid-week to next weekend and you have to go through the midwest, beware of this storm as it exits Colorado. This storm is going to blow up into a major blizzard and freezing rain event which could potentially lead to portions of I-90, I-80, and I -70 being closed.
Next Update tomorrow, I will post early and in the afternoon. Thanks for following!