DENVER – Models for the coming snow show everything from inches to several feet, but there’s a reason why there are so many different forecasts about the storm ahead, according to Chief Meteorologist Mike Nelson.
As of Tuesday night, the storm was about 1,000 miles away, just entering the west coast – it must cross the Sierra Nevada, the Wasatch, and then the Rocky Mountains of Colorado before even reaching the Eastern Plains and hitting the Denver. Surface.
Many things can change within a few days, but we know major changes are on the way. We’ll get a little bit of snow for the next 24 hours, and then comes the heavy snowfall for the weekend – and it could be one of the biggest snow storms in years.
But forecasting major storms is not easy.
We use computer models that are very complicated and run on a supercomputer. They simulate how storm systems will move across the United States and around the world.
That mathematical model takes all kinds of different layers in the atmosphere and divides it into little boxes, and then tries to move it from one time period to the next and then to the next and the next.
That’s one way of figuring out how the storms will move.
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Now to make it more interesting. There is not just one computer model out there. There are several models.
There is a global prediction model, there is a European model that works in both Europe and North America, the Canadian model, the North American model, and each of these computer models has a different set of physics, different equations, different assumptions about how the the atmosphere will change and change over time.
So you put the same data in four different models. Normally we don’t get exactly the same output, so we come up with a variety of snow amounts for a given storm.
Here’s basically what’s going to happen in the coming days.
Late Wednesday we expect rain and snow showers over the west. Thursday it will be windy and dry in the southeast. As the storm begins to sweep across the Great Basin, through Nevada and eventually to Utah, the snow builds up.
By the time we arrive on Friday, that low point is down above the four corner area. For people who have been looking at the Colorado weather for a long time, that four corner low is the most interesting for a big heavy snowfall. That’s because it will work its way down southeast Colorado, pull a ton of moisture into the Gulf of Mexico, and spin it around the higher ground to the west – that’s an upward slope that wraps around the low-pressure system. swirls. That concentrates the heavy snow right along the Front Range and the Continental Divide.
Again, this storm is still hundreds of miles away. As it gets closer and closer, we can pin that down a little bit better.
But it looks like the San Juans can see snow for a meter or two. Northeast Colorado could see up to a foot, and rain over the Southeast with very little or no snow. Farther north and west could see 6 to 12 inches.
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For the Denver Front Range area, there could be more than two feet of snow in some areas, especially just east of the Continental Divide – parts of Clear Creek, Gilpin County, Boulder County, and higher in Larimer County could see 48 inches of snow and local , maybe a little more.
March is our biggest snow month of the year, and this big front rain snow is great for our water supply. It will certainly be a hassle for Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, but we will be absorbing the moisture because we really need it with the drought we’ve had.