DENVER – Colorado will welcome the first week of the new year with a round of light snow that could make for a slick commute Friday morning before a stronger system brings significantly more snow to the area by the end of the week, forecasters with the National Weather Service said Tuesday.
The first system will bring mainly light snow from the Four Corners area which will make for cooler temperatures late Thursday into Thursday night. While considerable snowfall amounts aren’t expected from this storm winter driving conditions will occur starting Thursday afternoon for the mountains and in the evening for the plains.
Between 1-2 inches of snow are likely for Denver, with less than an inch at Denver International Airport (DIA). The Palmer Divide and the mountains stand the “best chance of at least a couple of inches of snow,” forecasters in Boulder said via X, formerly Twitter, early Tuesday morning.
While snowfall amounts will be on the low end, Coloradans in the eastern San Juan and southern Sangre de Cristo mountains can expect “some pockets of moderate snow.”
Weather service officials in Pueblo said the plains east of I-25 may be just warm enough for precipitation to start as rain before it switches over to snow by Thursday night. The steady snowfall will then taper off to snow showers/flurries over the mountains Friday morning through the afternoon.
“First guess of 4-8 inches over the eastern San Juans and higher peaks of the Sangres, and a general 1-4 elsewhere, (with the) heaviest (snowfall) near the mountains and south of Highway 50,” Pueblo forecasters said in their latest forecast discussion, with heavier accumulations of 4 inches or more possible over the far eastern plains (Baca, Prowers, and eastern Las Animas counties).
The mountains are likely to see some snow showers but nothing substantial on Friday and Saturday, forecasters said, with some light accumulations of between 1-3 inches over the higher peaks.
By Sunday, another storm system will develop over the western U.S. into the Great Basin that will move into our area by Sunday night through Monday.
“This system could be strong enough to warrant substantial snowfall amounts to, at least, some of the forecast area,” forecasters in Boulder wrote. “Still too early to tell.”
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