It appears the atmosphere is responding to the weak La Nina event, at least as far as Colorado is concerned. The pattern for the next 5-10 days over CO will feature northwest flow aloft, and systems skirting to the north of us, which will bring some mountain snow, but keep the foothills and Plains dry and breezy. Long range models keep this pattern in place through at least Thanksgiving.
Current forecast has an upper ridge moving across CO bringing us lots of sunshine and warming temps. An upper trough will approach CO this weekend, and bring snow to the mountains west of the Divide on Saturday and Sunday, while the foothills and Plains remain dry and breezy. Westerly winds will be gusty at times from Thursday into Saturday, with gusts to 30-40 mph at times. A weak cold front associated with the upper trough will move across CO on Saturday night, so cooler temps on Sunday.
For next week, some moutain snow early next week west of the Divide, then dry for the entire state late next week.
A couple of interesting weather notes. A late season tropical storm has formed in the western Atlantic, Sean, but will stay offshore. A very intense storm affected western AK on Tuesday, with a near record low sea level pressure of 948 millibars that produced 100 mph winds and a storm surge of 8-12 feet across portions of western AK south of Nome. Due to teh lack of sea ice in the Bering Sea, flooding was much more possible.
So far for snow, Conifer Mtn has received 20.0 inches trhough the end of October, which is just slight above our normal of 19.5 inches for this time. We have already received 14.5 inches in November, which is just 1 inch shy of our normal snowfall for the month.
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"Climatology is what you expect, Weather is what you get".
"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong".
Too bad future generations aren't here to see all the great things we are spending their $$ on!!
