It was a pretty great weekend across Colorado with some awesome pictures of snow-capped mountains with fields of golden aspen trees beneath.
I talked about the likelihood that it would be a great leaf-peeping weekend with my white and gold forecast that came out last Thursday and I’m happy to say it was an awesome weekend for that.
It has stayed cold enough for Copper Mountain to start making snow! It’s that time of the year, y’all.
Forecast
The forecast through the rest of this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be rather gorgeous. There’s not much atmospherically happening to make us warmer or colder than normal so our temperatures will be holding very close to normal for the next 5-7 days.
There are no significant blues or yellows on the map which would denote areas of storminess or dryness. So expect some typical weather this week. Here’s a look at some areas around Colorado and their forecast.
Most everyone is where they should be this time of the year. The Front Range will be watching a weak surge of cooler air move through behind a cold front Thursday into Friday. That may come with some light upslope and rain chances but that will largely be confined to areas on the Palmer Divide and in the favored Foothill locations.
Other than that, it’s a mostly dry forecast through the weekend.
What to watch next week
So, it’s about that time of the year when we start watching for storms to dive south from Canada. The models get better and better each year as more data is readily available but when it comes to long-term forecasting for these models, there is still uncertainty.
You’ll hear these disclaimers all winter long from different folks and it’s true, there’s just uncertainty in long-term forecasting still – especially in a transitionary month like now.
So, the two models we’ll be watching are the EURO and the GFS. I monitor others but for the sake of sharing what I’ve found, we’ll just show these two for now. Both models are picking up that there could be a colder, wintery storm around the middle of next week but where will it be? That’s up for debate.
There’s clearly the signal of a storm out there next week but what the EURO is showing compared to what the GFS is showing is greatly different. The EURO is showing a sharp cold front with light snow possible along the Urban Corridor and in the mountains. The GFS is showing mainly sunny and seasonable temperatures at this time.
The National Blend of Models (NBM) takes all of the models around and blends them into one to show the average of what is being computed. It shows a couple of cold fronts and just a bit of snow over the state.
With the temperatures that the NBM is spitting out Tuesday-Thursday of next week for Denver, don’t expect snow. Although some “accumulation” is showing up on the NBM, that amount isn’t enough to stick along the Urban Corridor but rather would be that snowflakes would be falling but not sticking. The mountains could benefit from this storm in the form of a couple of inches of snow but for the most part, there’s not much confidence in the snow forecast.
For now, let’s just sit back and watch what happens with the models this week and of course, look for updates as the week goes on.
Finally, the Climate Prediction Center just dropped its new October outlook and it has changed a bit from the last update.
It’s still showing the state experiencing warmer than normal temperatures overall but now the outlook is showing above-normal precipitation from I-25 west into Utah. This would be a great outcome if it comes to fruition. Some of the longer-range models are showing the rest of October (past next week) as being a bit more active for our area.
We’ll see!
~Andy
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