The Pacific Gates Are Opening Up!

Woohoo! A series of Southern Track storms is looking to stay on course which means decent snows.

Let’s chat. Look at this cool thing.

This product is known as “precipitable water”. Take note, the light blue line that extends from Hawaii to California is this cool thing called the Pineapple Express. Essentially tropical moisture is aimed straight at California and with a westerly flow – that put Colorado in the path. Also of not in the PW video above – there’s a secondary swirl of moisture (or low pressure) sitting to the NW of Hawaii – that is the next storm in the series!

Okay, so what does it mean? It means we have solid chances for precipitation over the next week. Satellite imagery from Wednesday midday shows a lot but lets focus on what’s coming. There’s a solid stream of clouds over Cali and draped back to Hawaii (just proving that the moisture is there!) Actually, this is worthy to note: so much moisture that there are Flash Flood watches and Winter Storm Warning up for a good chunk of Cali.

Active Cali Weather for the next 36 hours

Flood watch: 1-4″ of rain through Friday
High Surf: 20 foot swells possible!
High Wind: Gust to 60 mph possible
Winter Storm: Most location in the Sierra are expecting over 2 feet by Thursday night! (wake up Mammoth and Tahoe! Pow is coming!

Okay back to Colorado – just super excited for Cali.

NEAR TERM (through Friday):

We have steady cloud cover over the state – this is going to be one of those stretches of cloudiness that Colorado doesn’t seem too often. By day 3 of clouds – everyones going to be questioning what’s going on. Snow, mainly light stuff, will fall in the mountains. By Friday night the Front Range and Eastern Plains of Colorado will likely see something. Rain changing to snow or all snow – either way amounts will generally be light.

This is the GFS model – just one glance for a general idea of what’s going to come. The Euro lines up with this decently well. For the mountains – expect a general 2 – 6 inches of snow. Higher elevations could see up to 10″. Front range (FoCo down to the Springs) – I wouldn’t expect much of anything. Maybe a few snow or rain showers but no accumulations or issues by Friday PM. The Plains could expect accumulating snow but that will mainly come Friday night to Saturday. Fun fact: this little storm for us on Thursday and Friday will likely turn into a full fledged winter storm by the weekend for the midwest…again!

Winter weather advisories and winter storm watches are likely

Bringing it on back…again. So this weekend. Cool stuff is happening…maybe. Here’s my dilemma.

EURO shows no big snow for Denver through Tuesday

GFS show a decent chance at accumulating snow – possible advisory criteria for Denver

Now, yes Denver *could* see accumulating snow. We have to watch how that storm organizes (remember this is that storm that is currently NW of Hawaii! – so, there’s time to wait)

Needless to say, there is active weather continuing through the next 10 days. This all comes with temperatures continuing on the downward trend – which means this weekend and next week are going to be cold!

Brrr. It’s cold outside baby.

It looks like Tuesday and Wednesday of next week will be dry before our next storm moves in! Keep checking back in.

~Rain or shine,
I’m Andy Stein

Andy's Weather