Colorado Weather Forecast | Mar. 23–27, 2021
Two more storms before the weekend.
Saturday to Sunday’s storm has wrapped up, with most significant snow ending this morning. There are a few exceptions — most notably Monarch, which picked up 4” on their snow stake between 5am and 8am, thanks to focused easterly flow. A few convective showers are floating around at the moment, but they haven’t been included in the totals.
Major busts for this storm include Castle Rock and Colorado Springs, which did better than we forecasted and received some very strong bands of snow last night and pockets of moderate snow that persisted into this morning. Conversely, a few resorts came in an inch shy.
Forecast: Storm Tuesday March 23 — Wednesday March 26
Snow starts up again Tuesday afternoon as yet another closed low drops into Arizona and tracks east into New Mexico.
This low will be further south than the one that just impacted us, so snow totals will overall be lower across central and northern Colorado, and the highest totals will be in southern Colorado and in New Mexico. The amount of snow in Colorado will decrease if the low ends up digging further south than expected.
Colorado will actually be in the center of two closed lows, which is not the easiest setup to forecast! Spread between models is quite large, with even the CAMs at pretty huge disagreement — check out the NAM vs. the WRF-ARW:
Note that the above difference is a solid 4–8" for many ski resorts. With that in mind, our forecast is from a perspective of not being that enthused by dynamics, moisture, or 700mb winds, despite some models having impressive totals.
Besides a brief period of southwesterly winds in the San Juans tomorrow afternoon, winds will generally be from the northeast (due to our previous storm, which has strengthened and is moving north). In northern Colorado, this is accompanied with only a modest amount of moisture, so this storm (which will impact the Front Range again on Tuesday night) wont bring as much snow. We also think this is causing models to overdo totals in the San Juans.
Weak winds aloft and modest amounts of large-scale lift will be the limiting factor for totals in southern Colorado, as there is some decent moisture availability for much of this event. On the other hand, instability, especially in northern Colorado, could help driver stronger snow at times than just the large-scale dynamics may suggest.
In the northern Colorado mountains, snow will start around Tuesday afternoon and taper off that night, with light snow continuing through Wednesday. Pockets of moderate to heavy snow are possible during the day on Wednesday.
In southern Colorado, snow will be a bit more consistent but again, Wednesday will feature snow that is more organized into scattered cells which will be hit or miss.
On the I-25 corridor and Front Range, most snow will fall from Tuesday evening (or Tuesday night) into Wednesday morning.
Significant snow will wrap up by Wednesday night across the state.
Forecast: Storm Thursday March 27— Friday March 28
As soon as the system departs, a more open wave moves in behind it.
Southwesterly to westerly flow and a bit of available moisture will get snow going again, but large-scale lift looks very weak, and subsidence moves in quickly as the trough axis passes on Friday evening/night. Significant snow would fall in Colorado’s mountains from Thursday afternoon to Friday night, with highest totals in the San Juans west of Vail Pass.
This would not be a particularly exciting event, with maybe 2–6" in most mountains west of Vail Pass and 1–5" east. Snowfall projections in the San Juans range from 3–10" as a reasonable estimate.
Here’s a look at powder potential from Thursday morning to Saturday morning, which lines up with what we’re thinking for potential impacts and distribution.
We should see ridging returning for the weekend, bringing warmer temperatures and sunnier conditions, though some model runs have more complex dynamics that could keep things a bit unsettled.
We’ll do a more in depth writeup as we get towards the end of the week. Apologies if this one was a little skimpy — we’ve been stretched thin today.
Forecast by
Thomas Horner (Twitter: @thomaschorner)
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