How Much Snow Colorado Could Receive This Weekend And Why It’s Hard To Predict

DENVER – Models for the upcoming snow show everything from a few inches to several feet, but there’s a reason there are so many different forecasts for the upcoming storm, according to chief meteorologist Mike Nelson.

On Tuesday evening, the storm was about 1,000 miles away, having just arrived on the west coast – it must pass through the Sierra Nevada, the Wasatch and then the Rocky Mountains of Colorado before it even reaches the eastern plains and impact the Denver surface.

A lot can change in a matter of days, but we know big changes are coming. We’re going to have some snow in the next 24 hours, then heavy snow will arrive for the weekend – and this could be one of the biggest snowstorms in years.

But predicting big storms is not easy.

We use very complicated computer models that are run on a supercomputer. They simulate how storm systems are going to move in the United States and around the world.

This mathematical model takes all kinds of different layers in the atmosphere and breaks it into little tiny boxes, then tries to get it from one period to another and then to the next and the next.

It’s one way of understanding how storms are going to move.

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Now to make it more interesting. There isn’t just one model of computer out there. There are several different models.

There is a global forecasting model, there is a European model that works both in Europe and North America, the Canadian model, the North American model and each of these computer models has a different set of physics, different equations, different assumptions about how the atmosphere will move and change over time.

So you paste the same data into four different models. Usually, we don’t get exactly the same result, so we offer a variety of snow amounts for any given storm.

Here’s roughly what’s going to happen over the next few days.

Late Wednesday we expect rain and snow showers over the west. It will be windy and dry over the southeast by Thursday. As the storm begins to move across the Great Basin, through Nevada and eventually into Utah, the snow is increasing.

By the time we get to Friday, that low is going down in the four corners area. For people who have been watching the weather in Colorado for a long time, these four low turns are the most interesting for big, thick snow. This is because it will descend over southeast Colorado, drawing a ton of moisture into the Gulf of Mexico, spinning it over the higher ground to the west – it’s an upward slope swirling around the low pressure system. This concentrates the heavy snowfall along the Front Range and Continental Divide.

Again, this storm is still hundreds of kilometers away. As he gets closer and closer, we’ll be able to pinpoint him a little better.

But it looks like the San Juans may have seen a foot or two of snow. Northeast Colorado could see up to a foot and rain over the Southeast with very little to no snow. Further north and west you could see 6 to 12 inches.

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For the Denver Front Range area, more than two feet of snow could be in store for some areas, particularly just east of the continental divide – parts of Clear Creek, Gilpin County, the Boulder County and Larimer County could see 48 inches of snow. and locally, maybe a little more.

March is our biggest snow month of the year, and those heavy snow snows beforehand are great for our water supply. It will definitely be a problem for Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, but we will take the humidity because we really need it with the drought conditions that we have experienced.