4/2/26 Thursday 1 pm
Nice event! It exceeded every forecaster’s expectations-Wolf Creek 19 inches, Telluride and Purgatory 11 inches.
I remember getting an email about a month ago asking if I thought the storms would return. As I always say, it’s not if a pattern change will happen, it’s when. My answer was that the storms would return as soon as Purg closes.
At the time, I was kinda joking. It’s similar to only getting big storms on a big holiday travel weekend.
I got another email just a couple of days ago. They asked, “Is this going to be a pattern change or was it just a one-off?”
I said I would call it a pattern shift. I said we would likely enter a period defined by frequent troughs and weak ridges.
As you remember, we started tracking yesterday’s storm quite a while before it arrived. It was great work by the GFS to sniff it out early and stay on it.
Which brings me to my point: look at what the GFS is sniffing out now.
Below is the GFS’s total liquid precipitation for April 8th-13th (basically a week from today).
That’s 40 inches of snow at Purgatory. Ouch. I will be watching every day!