Published Thursday 2/11/21 at 1:45 pm

Snow will begin falling in most areas by 5 am tomorrow morning. Snow will change to light rain or mist in the lower elevations midday and the snow level should rise to around 7,200 feet or slightly higher by early afternoon. Precipitation should wind down by late afternoon or early evening in the lower elevations, mid-elevations just a little later. Snow will wind down in most mountain locations by late Friday night but may persist until early Saturday at Wolf Creek. This is not going to be a big event. However, it will moisten up or prime the atmosphere for the heavier snow event Saturday night and Sunday.

There are still some discrepancies on total precipitation amounts for Saturday and Sunday between the models, but before we are done I expect numerous Winter Storm Advisories and Winter Storm Warnings to be issued (as early as Friday) for the weekend. I don’t want to get too deep into the weekend yet. I will have 24 to 36 hours of future model runs to evaluate. I don’t expect things to pick up before noon to 3 pm on Saturday.

As I mentioned, snow should start tomorrow morning early, then we will be walking a bit of a tight rope on temps throughout the day Friday.

Here are the latest model precipitation forecasts for the first system.

GFS

Canadian

Euro

Based on these model runs here is my forecast for the first system only.

Lower elevations 0 to 2 inches before melting.

Mid-elevations including Ouray and Pagosa 2 to 4 inches with higher amounts above 7,800 feet.

Purgatory, Lemon, Mayday 4 to 6 inches.

Telluride, and 5 to 7 inches,

Wolf Creek 5 to 9 inches.

If necessary I will amend these amounts Friday morning.

As I said, I am not going to get too deep with the second system, but here are the additional totals from the latest model runs for Saturday through Monday morning.

Canadian

Euro

From late Saturday through Sunday there is a good possibility that very cold air will mix in and dramatically raise the snow to liquid ratios resulting in some impressive totals by Monday morning. The models are back and forth right now on how impressive the third system will be, which should be coming in late Monday or early Tuesday.

I don’t expect winter highlights to be issued for the weekend yet this afternoon, but if they do post some type of blanket watch I will post it later this afternoon.

Next Update Friday morning, thanks for following and supporting the site.

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