Tuesday 9/28 8:50 am
During the day yesterday, stratiform showers developed in the extreme southern portions of the forecast area. Later in the afternoon and last night scattered showers and thunderstorms developed across the forecast area. The higher totals were in the southern half of the forecast area. Montezuma County picked up 0.15″ to 0.50″. La Plata County ranged from 0.10″ to 0.30″. Archuleta County had numerous reports from 0.20″ to 0.30″ and Dolores County picked up 0.20″ to 0.50″.
Showers are going to become more widespread today and tomorrow as the trough to our northwest approaches Colorado.
Here is the surface map showing the current location of the main trough and cold front, along with a few other fun things.
There is a lot going on here. You can see the main system is stretching from Montana through Nevada then down into Southern California. The blue triangles indicate that it is a cold front.
I circled in red part of that feature in Southern California. You will notice that there are dashes between the blue triangles. If this is correct, this indicates the forecaster who prepared this map believes that cyclogenesis is occurring. In short, this means that the tail end of the system is undergoing a strengthening process. Often times when this happens here, it breaks apart from the main system and becomes its own storm. This could have ramifications for Friday.
I also circled in black two disturbances. They are shortwave troughs that will either be absorbed into the main system or be nudged closer to us. Either way, they will likely affect our weather today and tonight.
The models are still at odds beginning on Thursday. The US models are showing a quick departure with the main trough and all other features late Thursday. The Euro and the other models are showing another feature coming into play for Friday.
After seeing that new surface map, I think there is a chance that the Euro, Canadian and German models are seeing the feature in Southern California developing into another system. This would bring enhanced precipitation Thursday and Friday. If that happens we could see some significant snow over the passes, especially Wolf Creek.
We have some time between now and Thursday to see how this pans out and figure out how low the snow levels will drop. Meanwhile, here are the latest liquid precipitation forecasts through Friday. There are big differences between the GFS and the other models.
GFS
Canadian
German
Euro
Discrepancies still exist for the weekend and next week. I will be addressing that on Thursday.
The new Euro weekly model runs came out last night. They keep getting better and better! Here are 46-day (positive) precipitation anomalies. This shows the amount of rain above average that is being forecasted. That is a nice bullseye over the forecast area.
Since this is through November 11th, not all of that precipitation will fall as rain. Here are the forecasted snow totals (before melting) through November 11th.
It looks like everyone is included in that party.
My next update will be Wednesday. Thanks for following and supporting the site!
Aztec, 0.17 yesterday afternoon and evening!