Published Monday at 1:15 pm
1 to 2 inches of snow fell last night from Telluride to Ouray and Silverton. At 10:45 this morning I was surprised to look outside my window in my home office and see a graupel/snow mix. This lasted about 15 or 20 minutes.
Here it was on the radar at the time.
Just a very localized little band of snow at the time. The radar currently depicts several similar little bands setting up mainly in the western portion of the forecast area. Don’t be surprised to see a few passing flakes above 7,500 feet this afternoon.
Here is the little shortwave trough to our west that is responsible for this activity. I did a poor job but I circled it in red.
For the rest of the day, there will be a few pop-up showers mainly in the mountains before they subside this evening.
Tuesday should start out uneventful. Later in the day snow showers will start in the higher elevations then drift down to the mid and lower elevations by late night. This will be in response to a low-pressure system moving through Arizona. Snow showers will pick up slightly by morning in most areas, but precipitation may not make it to the ground below 6,500 feet. This will happen as the low-pressure system drifts just south of the four corners and into Central New Mexico. I expect we will see some nice surprises by late Wednesday or early Thursday morning.
Thursday will be another transition day as yet another system approaches our area. Snow will break out Thursday night and into Friday. The snow will finish up late on Friday.
I am going to stick with the same format as yesterday. Here are the models’ total liquid precipitation forecasts ending Saturday morning.
GFS (the old GFS version 15 has been discontinued)
Euro
Canadian
German
It appears we will go into a period of spring-like weather with warmer temperatures under a ridge of high pressure for at least 5 days (and maybe longer), starting next weekend.
Of course, I had to look out at the long-term model runs. The GFS crystal ball goes out 16 days. It is showing an Easter snowstorm. It is way too early to talk about(even though I just did). For now, just file it away to the back of your brain for a week or so.
The next Update will be Tuesday. Thanks for following and supporting the site!