Published Saturday, January 9th at 8:30 am
What is now a small and weak disturbance will pass over us today and may generate flurries to heavy flurries for the 550 passes and Wolf Creek (especially on the east side). Of course, once it passes us and heads into central New Mexico the system will find new energy to work with and bring heavy snow to the northeast mountains of New Mexico and northern Texas.
Then that’s it. Here is the 10-day precipitation outlook from the models.
GFS
Canadian
Euro
Yuck!
But can we trust the models in the longer term? I hate to even bring this up, but Covid is impacting the weather models. Yes, you read that correctly. Covid has reduced air travel. Air travel primarily occurs at the altitude of the jet stream. The jet stream largely determines the storm track. Historically, aircraft have reported 250 million weather observations per year and that is just in the US. Weather models like the Euro rely on those observations.
Check out this chart showing us what we already know, air travel is down dramatically across the world over the last 12 months.
Here is an easier to read statistical chart.
Yes, that China stat jumps right off the page, the irony of the whole thing could be another topic, but I will stick with the weather.
Hopefully, before long I will have some weather to talk about.
In the meantime, thanks for following!
Light snow falling this morning, 1/10, in Bayfield just north of 160. @4:30 a.m. all sidewalks and roads covered with about 1/2 inch and still lightly falling.