Happy snowy Thursday morning!

I love waking up on snow days and checking out the mountain cams (we have all of them here on OpenSnow, on the website and our app, and if we’re missing one of your favorite cams, email me at [email protected] and we’ll add it).

Steamboat’s mid-mountain cam, just before sunrise on Thursday, showed snow in the air and snow covering the roof of the gondola building. Lovely!

The most snow that I found on a cam or a sensor was the 4 inches at Vail’s mid-mountain snow stake as of about 5 am. Plus, updated images show that an additional 2 inches fell at this stake between 5 am and 7 am.

The radar animation over Colorado at around 6 am Thursday showed one overall band of intense snow moving west-to-east across the state.

Within that overall band, there appear to be two very intense bands.

One of the intense bands is around the Aspen area Eagle county area at around 6 am, and this band should touch Telluride and the southern mountains as well. The band will hit the central and northern mountains through mid-morning.

The other intense band is just west of the Denver as of 6 am and should push through the city in the morning.

For the rest of Thursday, expect these bands to deliver a few hours of intense snow in the morning for the central and northern mountains, followed by on-and-off snow showers in the afternoon and evening, with all of this action dropping another 1-5 inches.

Enjoy the snow!

We will see dry weather from Friday, October 11 through about Thursday, October 17. Temperatures will be cold on Friday then slowly warm back toward average readings for next week. Temperatures will continue to be cold enough for higher-elevation mountains to make snow.

The next storm should arrive sometime between Friday, October 18 and Tuesday, October 22, though I still have no confidence in the details. We could see another intense storm, just get brushed by this system, or it could miss us entirely.

I’ll post again on Friday morning with a recap and more pictures of the current storm.

Thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ

Upcoming talks

These talks usually range from 30-45 minutes and allow me to show a little of the science behind snow forecasting, have some fun, and answer lots of questions. I’ll post details about each talk soon.

Boulder: Oct 24 @ Neptune Mountaineering

Golden: Oct 30 @ Powder7

Frisco: Nov 8 @ Highside Brewery

Nederland: Nov 12 @ Salto Coffee / Tin Shed Sports

Denver: Nov 14 @ Denver Athletic Club

Evergreen: Nov 21 @ Boone Mountain Sports

Basalt: Dec 12 @ Bristlecone Mountain Sports

If you have a venue in a town not listed above and would like for me to give a presentation this fall, send me an email ([email protected]).

Geography Key

Northern Mountains
Steamboat, Granby, Beaver Creek, Vail, Ski Cooper, Copper, Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, Abasin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, Eldora, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Along the Divide
Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass

East of the Divide
Eldora, Echo, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cameron Pass

Central Mountains
Aspen, Sunlight, Monarch, Crested Butte, Irwin, Powderhorn

Southern Mountains
Telluride, Silverton – north side of the southern mountains | Purgatory, Wolf Creek – south side of the southern mountains