Monday Morning Update

3/13/23 Monday 7:35 am

Red Mountain Pass remains closed this morning. Last night’s best guess was that they hoped it would be open by this afternoon. There is a high likelihood that 550 will encounter more closures later this week, plan accordingly.

Another AR event is headed our way. The source of the moisture with these events is always tropical, which leads to high snow levels and wet snow. This is not necessarily representative of the next storm cycle. I still expect us to return to below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation to close out the month. In other words–it is not time to take off your snow tires, do any planting, remove your plow, or “summerize” your snowthrower for the season.

My high elevation forecast was through Monday morning (now). Purgatory and Wolf Creek both exceeded the upper range of my forecasts. Wolf Creek ended up with 25 inches vs my forecast of 18-24 inches. Purgatory received 22 inches, I had 14-20 inches. I did say I thought my forecasts were conservative. Telluride ran into some warmer air, the airport even officially reported rain at 2 am, they ended up lower than my forecast with 10 inches, I expected 12-16 inches.

Here is a first look at the next storm, which looks very similar to what we just went through. Snow levels should be just slightly lower for accumulating snow as 10,000-foot temperatures may be a degree or two colder, fingers crossed…

Once again, I expect Winter Storm Warnings to be issued, probably tomorrow, but perhaps as early as this afternoon. Moisture will start moving in on Tuesday. Precipitation will break out late Tuesday night and track into the mid and lower elevations Wednesday morning. The heaviest precipitation will fall on Wednesday and Thursday. I do expect leftovers to linger into Friday in some locations, especially Wolf Creek Pass. I expect another round of closures with this storm, perhaps more so than the last storm.

Here are the latest model forecasts for total liquid precipitation.

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