Saturday Morning Update–Unsettled Through Thursday

12/3/22 Saturday 8 am

Isolated mountain snow showers will continue throughout the day with minimal impact or accumulation. By tomorrow, the models diverge, with the Euro advecting some light subtropical precipitation into the area. This would fall as rain in the lower elevations and snow in the higher elevations.

The Canadian and GFS do not introduce the moisture until Monday. The models do agree that the heaviest precipitation should fall Tuesday night through Wednesday. The systems that will be moving through are less organized than I prefer to deal with and for now, are very difficult to work out individual details throughout the period.

I said yesterday I would start posting the model forecast accumulations today. These will be for today through Thursday. When I see a model run similar to what the European showed overnight, it tells me that the model it is still trying to work out the details. It starts the light precipitation on Sunday and it continues with just a few lulls until Thursday. This is an unlikely scenario and one I will be keeping an eye on.

Here are the European model maps put into motion. I am sorry but when I post a GIF like this I cannot add a red dot or crop the map to enhance our forecast area.

The green is rain, the blue is snow, and the freezing rain is pink. The darker the colors the heavier the precipitation.

I have mentioned in the past that often times the models will be fairly correct over a longer period but may get the day-to-day totals wrong so for now, let’s just look at the forecast totals through Thursday.

Here are the preliminary totals. There is a 100% chance that these totals will change over the next couple of days, at this point it is impossible to tell if they will increase or decrease. The amount of precipitation forecast for this period by the Euro is exactly the average amount of precipitation that historically has fallen during this period in the past.

European–There is no red dot needed with this service because the 0.6 is Durango downtown.

Canadian

GFS

This is the “new” GFS. About as soon as I get used to this model’s biases and quirks it gets “upgraded” so I am not very comfortable interpreting it right now. Be aware that most apps use the GFS for forecasts, which is why I am not a big fan of apps. The one exception would be the Open Snow app because they disclose where its data comes from and how often it updates.

I like what the German model is doing here, not only because it has the highest overall totals, but because I like the way it is spreading the precipitation based on terrain-driven orographics.