10/27/26 Tuesday 4 am
Yesterday morning’s model runs threw a wrench in the whole weekend setup! The European in particular had consistently shown 2″ to 3″ of liquid precipitation for the event, but one complete model run flipped to a solution showing 0.50″ to 1.00″.
This happened Sunday mid-morning as well. Then it flipped back. The other models are split between all-in and expecting less.
There are some wholesale changes in the big picture. Initially, the setup showed the remnants of Vance coming over the border in two batches. The first batch goes through Texas heading into the plains states.
The second batch comes several hours later through Arizona and into our area, bringing precipitation late Friday and early Saturday morning. This batch never really showed high precipitation totals. In those earlier runs, heavier precipitation arrived later Saturday and intensified on Sunday.
Now things have changed; models show the initial moisture batch is struggling to reach far enough north to bring precipitation to our area, and the deeper Pacific tropical airmass is slowing until Sunday, potentially lasting into Monday in some cases.
What does all of this mean? To me, it means we have to wait for better consensus on timing and track.
One the one hand, we are still seeing some models pump out high event totals:
Canadian:
GFS AI
European AI
On the other hand, some of these totals have come down (though some are up since yesterday afternoon, which adds to the confusion).
European (Legacy)
NBM
German
You will notice that the totals on these last 3 models are less than they were 24 hours ago. If we hadn’t experienced the last 2 months of heavy precipitation, we would consider these totals significant, “only 1 to 2 inches.”
So while some of these models have trended lower, Saturday night through Monday still could be a significant event with multiple impacts.
Snow levels will still be around 10,000 feet, and they could drop lower Sunday late or Monday morning. That is still something to be aware of for travel over the passes.
Hopefully, the next batches of model runs over the next 4 to 7 hours will show more consensus, but I am not holding my breath; there are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and I left out most of those details in this update; too much could change between now and then.
I will be back around 1 pm.
