CODOS UPDATE January 3, 2024: Slow Start to snow season
Greetings from Silverton,
We hope you had a great holiday. If you were off in Mexico or some other place you didn’t miss much weather wise. Our last storm ended on December 24 and right now major Colorado Basins are sitting at approximately 50-70% of median snowpack. In terms of the number of notable storms that have passed through Colorado we are sitting at about the same percentage. Usually by the end of December we have received 8 storms on average. This year we received 5. Not a horrible storm count thus far, its just the storms that did happen didn’t provide an overabundance of precipitation.
Don’t fret just yet, as the projection plots show below, from this point onward into the season anything can happen. For example, the San Juans in WY2019 was close to WY2024 current conditions near the first of January before things really took off and we had an epic season. And fortunately, more for Southern Colorado anyway, another series of precip events are coming our way. Over the next ~5 days Red Mountain Pass looks to gain around 20” snow accumulation, Wolf Creek 35”, Aspen area about 14”, Rabbit Ears Pass 25”, and Loveland Pass around 12”. The longer term outlook resembles the typical El Nino pattern and is staying bold with increased chances for above normal precipitation in Colorado.
No observed dust-on-snow has come across our radar or any that we have heard about. Hopefully it stays that way.
Snow School for Water Professionals: We have had a lot of interest in Snow School for Water Professionals to be held this February 21-23, 2024. The combination classroom and field course will begin on Wednesday morning at our office in Silverton and end on Friday afternoon (2.5 days). The class is perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about the role of snow and our mountain environments as it pertains to water resources, designed to enhance understanding of snowpack processes, snow monitoring and data. Please see details in the link above. Please email me (jderry@snowstudies.org) with any questions.
More Soon