The State of the Atmosphere: Sunday, January 17th, 2021

Subscribe to Weather5280Don't get left out in the cold, subscribe to Weather5280!

Even as we watch the chance for snow increase across the I-25 corridor and Front Range mountains Monday afternoon and night, it's hard to bee all that excited about possible totals as we track things today. Yet another storm that may deliver a couple inches to some folks, but for most of us a dusting to 1 or 2" will be about as well as we'll do with the incoming system.

A check on the timeline shows another nice afternoon today with highs around 50°F across the metro area, before turning cooler on Monday with the increased chance of snow for your M.L.K. Day afternoon and evening.

The greatest chance for accumulating snow will be along and west of I-25. The chance of accumulating snow also decreases for the urban corridor the further north of Denver you go – a system where Fort Collins may not see much of any snow at all, while the Palmer Divide sees perhaps a couple of inches.

Portions of the higher terrain across Northern Colorado should see several inches of snow (mainly tonight, less tomorrow night), with the heaviest snowfall expected across Southern Colorado Monday and Monday night into Tuesday.

The map below shows about what we expect for totals over the coming days. Colorado Springs perhaps with the greatest "boom" potential, but even in today's data that's looking less probable. So, generally a dusting to 2" for the Denver area, 1 - 3" perhaps for the Western Palmer Divide, and again most likely a Trace to 2" for Colorado Springs, with perhaps some higher totals west of the city. Needless to say, not the storm many of the snow lovers out there crave, but great to see our snow-starved mountains at least getting something, and perhaps a bit of snow for the urban corridor as well, we'll see.

For temperatures... look for mild weather today to cool over the next two days or so with the passage of a cold front Monday afternoon. Tuesday will be pretty chilly across Northeast Colorado, but what snow we do see will be done, and the sun will return for many of us:

With the Monday/Tuesday system well gone, and our next weather impacts not expected until late in the week, Wednesday looks at this time to be the warmest afternoon for most of us. Ridging will establish itself, at least briefly, with a large cutoff low off the coast of Southern California, and westerly/southwesterly flow aloft over our area as we wait to see what that low ends up doing late this coming week and next weekend.

While the details remain fuzzy, it does look as though we'll see a steady increase in snow coverage across our mountains by Thursday night or Friday, and perhaps our next chance of snow across Eastern Colorado by Saturday. Right now confidence in that amounting to anything meaningful east of the hills is low at best, but we'll have some cool air in place, and perhaps some moisture to work with... so we'll see.

Stay tuned, we'll keep an eye on tomorrow and let you know if anything changes dramatically with our thinking. As we posted for our Insiders on Friday, the PNA flip could mean some across the region finally get snow during the second half of the month, but it's not clear how much of any of that will end up across the eastern half of the state.

PNA may finally flip, what that means for the weather pattern across Colorado and the West for the second half of January
We’ve been teased before, but this time the support for a PNA flip grows and that’ll mean parts of Colorado and the region may catch a bit of winter this winter.