Thread: Colorado Weather Discussion Thread

Thanks to this storm being a total bust (along with all of the forecasters fucking this one up big time), at least I won't have a tough time finding dry trails later this week.

I liked how the forecast went from "a storm of epic proportions that will rival the '03 blizzard" to absolutely nothing in the course of two days.

Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

I think by the weekend the temps will make almost everything about the same. In bounds stashes are gonna be hard to find anywhere in a day or two.

Am I wrong or are the temps being forcasted for Wolf Creek later this week about 10 degrees colder than Vail? That would seem pretty damn significant for snow quality retention.

Originally Posted by cmsummit

BUST. With the exception of Wolf Creek that reported 14" new, this storm didn't really pan out for anyone in CO.

28" in Silverton...someone is having an epic day

Originally Posted by The SnowShow

28" in Silverton...someone is having an epic day

Fail... they're only open Thu-Sun.

Originally Posted by Lindahl

Fail... they're only open Thu-Sun.

Because earning your turns is the unpossible

Originally Posted by Lindahl

Fail... they're only open Thu-Sun.

Rent the heli for $4000/hour, 2 hour min. M,T or W.

Last weekend.

What a punch in the gut. We went from expecting an epic pow day just 48 hours ago to getting completely skunked. That hurts.

Originally Posted by Shredhead

Rent the heli for $4000/hour, 2 hour min. M,T or W.

Last weekend.

@ 6:15 is meatball couloir right? Hiked that a few years ago, great ski.

i went up anyway and had a fun time. It wasn't the awesome pow day I had wanted but it was still fun and better than working.

As for the overall pattern, this is what this is. A typical La Nina pattern is warmer than usual for the end of hte season for our area. I don't see a change and would expect more of the same. We should still get a few more cold storms, but teh overall pattern will be SWerly storms and warm temps imo.

Get out and enjoy what ya got....deck season is here.

Anyone who thinks this storm was a total bust was obviously not one of the six people riding chair 9 today.

the bowl was fun today. got a new helmet cam and this is my second attempt (first was unwatchable cuz the quality was so bad), view at your own risk as i still suck at editing:

http://www.vimeo.com/20810369

Originally Posted by JaytaeMoney

the bowl fun today. got a new helmet cam and this is my second attempt (first was unwatchable cuz the quality was so bad), view at your own risk as i still suck at editing:

Don't be so hard on yourself - one of the better POVs I've seen in the past few days since you can ski and have some good choice in music. Nice work.

Not what was expected, but I got a nice early half day of some good turns. Sometimes you just have to let your expectations go, and just, well, go ski.

I was glad that I did.

Now, tomorrow, that's going to be EPIC BURGER.

I found some good snow up high at Breck yesterday. It definitely skied a lot better than the 1" report would indicate.

I was very dissapointed to wake up to the 0" report at highlands yesterday morning. however we saw the 10" report at Powderhorn and called the audible. They are reporting another 8" today which fell yesterday morning. The skiing was, needless to say, specatcular.

yeah, good turns were found at vail yesterday. it snowed all night lightly here...and it still snowing now. probably some decent accumulations up high

pretty amazing the difference a NW wind makes. Can we vote for the wind to never blow out of the SW again? All in favor???

The trees don't lie, yesterday was deep.

Originally Posted by linvillegorge

What a punch in the gut. We went from expecting an epic pow day just 48 hours ago to getting completely skunked. That hurts.

It hurts more when it's your job.

A little wrap-up on the storm:
http://www.coloradopowderforecast.co...nchoring-high/

fucking deep in the right spots today...before the sun came out. not to say it's all baked, but alot of it will be. maybe i didn't have an epic pow day, but over the last three days I have been having lots of fun in the bc. i def vote in favor of the eternal nw flow, but for sw flow, we did pretty well, as we have many other sw flow days this year. the 6 in reported, fell overnight and skied great, on the way to ev....

next 2 weeks at least, show above average temps. Yesterdays snow was nice and needed and we'll take anything we can get. Gonna be warm for awhile, spring is here.

A little while back MontanaSkier asked if it had been an odd winter. Gratzo suggested that on average it was nothing special, but it may have been otherwise. I did a very rough look at some number, but here is something a bit more complete.

Has it been a "weird winter"?

The average temperature for Jan-Feb was not out of the ordinary, so if we just went on the first moment there would not be anything of interest to talk about. However, some noticed that we've had some big up's and down's in the weather. There was nasty cold in both early Jan and Feb, but some very mellow days where a few were talking about bikes rather than skis.

Those living up in Eagle & Summit counties have indeed had a weird winter given the variance and/or range of temperatures seen in the last 2 months. Below are plots from my usual set of 6 SNOTEL station - most are local to the I-70 zone, but I also include Butte (at CB).

The most striking thing is that each station this year has registered its largest or 2nd largest range of temperatures in Jan-Feb since records began in the early 1980's. The standard deviation of the daily temperatures had a similarly high rank. This indicates that there has been larger than "usual" variability in temps this season; particularly in Vail, and particularly compared to last season which was rather flat in so many ways. However, this isn't the first time areas have seen this magnitude of variance. (If it's not obvious, the dashed lines in the plots are the 2011 value, not averages)










Data Notes: The data is Daily Average Temperature as measured at the SNOTEL sites for the months of January and February. Quality control was performed checking for absurd values, incorrectly repeated values, step values etc. 56 or more out of a possible 59 (or 60) valid days were needed in order to compute a mean, variance or range.

Thanks for posting/Nice work Blizzard! Interesting to think about the variability this year. More sandpaper (cold) snow this year, more heavy snow also. But it's been a great season!

Bring on spring! Just hope it keeps freezing overnight and some lines I've had on the list for many years will finally get done! Just a few more big spring storms and we should be good. Great season so far and I hope the spring couloir season here in CO is just getting going.

awesome stuff Blizzard...I knew it had been a weird winter temp wise. Gonna be warm and relatively dry for quite awhile. MAYBE, we can get a big pattern shift for some big spring storms after this two week (at least) stretch of warm weather.