It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve had a decent snow forecast but we have a cold front on its way that could drop several inches of snow across the Front Range.
A weak little system will move from the northern Rockies towards Arizona and New Mexico through Tuesday night. That will bring a cold front to our area overnight and with that cold front will come winds that are favorable to produce upslope winds. Those upslope winds will produce the most snow in the Foothills south and west of Denver where 4-8″ of snow is possible.
For much of the I-25 corridor, up to 5″ is possible. Since it will be a cold and snowy for Tuesday morning’s commute (and the evening commute), winter weather advisories have been posted from Castle Rock to Ft. Collins for accumulating snow and travel impacts.
Most of Colorado will get a little something from this storm but those in the SW Foothills of Denver, as well as, the Sangre De Cristos and the Wet Mountains will see the most snow through Tuesday. Roads are expected to be snow and ice-covered by Tuesday morning for the Denver area leading to a tough commute.
This snow will inevitable melt to water and that is the important factor to watch. With ongoing drought, moisture is what we need and the storm coming Tuesday will provide up to a quarter inch of liquid water for Denver while some areas could get over a half inch of liquid from this storm.
So far January has delivered a decent amount of snow for Denver. With the storm coming on Tuesday, we will likely rise above the “normal” amount of snow that is typically expected.
It’ll take less than an inch of snow in Denver on Tuesday to get us to the average monthly total. We haven’t had a month this season with above-normal snowfall. The season started off extremely bleak with no snow reported in all of October and November. We finally got some snow in December but we ended with several inches less than normal. With January likely to produce above-normal snowfall, hopefully this will be a trend that continues. In total, we are running well over a foot deficit in terms of snowfall this season.
With that said, our snowiest months of the year are coming up (March and April) so we have plenty of time to make up this deficit. The latest 3-month outlook is calling for February through April to feature warmer and drier than normal conditions.
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