San Juan Mountains Weather: More Snow, Areas of Impact and Amounts Uncertain

05 Feb San Juan Mountains Weather: More Snow, Areas of Impact and Amounts Uncertain

Today is a mostly a dry, transition day.  Looking into the future of the next few days,  a predominately zonal (westerly) flow with imbedded short wave disturbances drawing Pacific moisture across the Gt. Basin and into western Colorado through Saturday is the narrative.

Beginning tonight the San Juans could see light snow with the first short wave pushing through.  Models are not in agreement in timing, location, duration or snow accumulations, but because of this long duration event (Thursday–Sunday), snow totals could mount, but slowly on the light side for our southern mountains and favoring the northern and central mts.  There is much uncertainty.  Our best shot for snow is Thursday through Friday with SW flow.  8-12″ are possible above 11,000′ on WSW slopes.

Friday, a closed low moving down from the Pacific northwest will spread more moisture into our mountains.  One model has the San Juans doing well and another has the storm south of the border in N.M.  I’m going with the ‘too far south’  call.  FINALLY, one thing the disagreeable models do agree on is mountain snow will continue into Sunday.

Sunday night into Monday another system is progged to affect the southern mountains but stay tuned for an update with all of this uncertainty because the models will change.  That is 5 days away.