Colorado is on the Clock for Thursdays Storm

Posted May 8, 6:54 am MT 5:54 PT

Snow Stake Cams

This is the settled snow stake for Sunshine Village in Banff National Park Alberta, Canada. At the peak, it was reading about 6 feet. The second pic is the Great Divide cam from the same resort. It is a YouTube cam, you can access it here.

MSLP Surface Chart thru May 12

All Snow

Surface Temperature, 10,000 ft Temp, Total Precipitation, GFS All Snow CO, Aspen Blended Model

Forecast Discussion

We are still on track for this late season storm. I am throwing the kitchen sink at you with this one, adding all of the charts that I can find. Below is the animation of the 500 mb flow showing the cut-off low dig into southern Arizona and slide up through southeast Colorado.

Today and Tuesday

A couple of small waves will come through tonight and tomorrow with some thunderstorms possible. Temperatures near 50 with light winds gusting to 25 mph.

Wednesday

We will have a morning low temp around the freezing mark as another small wave passes that could bring a few snow showers through lunchtime. The main system arrives overnight Wednesday, around midnight, in southern Colorado moving northeast. We should have at least 8-12 hours of decent snowfall potential, with high temperatures only reaching 36 by 4 pm Thursday, at A-Basin Base.

Thursday and Friday 2-12 inches possible

Both Thursday and Friday could be good days to ride. If the storm does bring substantial snowfall, remember to carpool, as the lot fills up fast. This storm could easily go poof and fall apart, so all of this hype could be for nothing.

Thunder is possible with this storm, as it is relatively warm in the upper atmosphere (second chart above). We may not know if this storm is going to produce until Wednesday. Just be prepared and do your regular routine for snow dancing or sacrificing for the snow god.

Thursday System Last 4 Cycles (from yesterday)

This storm is completely cut-off from the jet stream, which is consistent with the past 4 cycles. Below is the projected jet stream map for Thursday. You can see the jet stream is flowing around a rather large Low-pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska, stays in Canada and flows around another Low-pressure system south of Greenland.