Monday – 15 Mar 2021 – 3:00pm
Overall situation…
Upper level southwest flow pushed quite a few clouds and a couple of weak mountain showers into our region today. The upper level low will move through northern New Mexico tomorrow and bring us some precip. Ridging will then keep us dry Wednesday through much of Saturday. Then the next system will impact us Saturday night through Monday. It’s too early to get into details on that one.
My forecast…
Tonight… Clouds will be in and out. Snowshowers will develop over the mountains in the early morning hours and over the valley around sunrise. Wolf Creek could get an inch by opening. Lows will be low teens to around 20.
Tomorrow… Expect mostly cloudy skies, a good chance for snowshowers, and even a possible thunderstorm. The best chance for precip will be late morning to evening. Snowshowers will end by midnight and clouds will clear overnight. Patchy fog is possible in the low lying areas after midnight. Highs will be upper 30s to low 40s and lows will be 5-15. Winds will peak around 25mph.
Snow amounts:
– 0-2” in the valley. It will be heavy wet snow that will struggle to accumulate.
– 4-8” in the mountains
Wednesday through most of Saturday…Partly cloudy skies and dry. Highs Wednesday will be mid to upper 40s and then lower to upper 50s the rest of the period.
Pagosa Springs Climatology
| Average High | Record High / Year | Average Low | Record Low / Year |
| 47 | 62 / 1955 | 14 | -21 / 1913 |
I’ll do another post tomorrow morning.
– Shawn
End of post
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Monday – 15 Mar 2021 – 8:30am
Two-day storm totals in our area ranged from 2” near town to around 12” in Chromo and Chama to 16” in the upper Blanco. Wolf Creek reported 9” in the last 24 hours and 24” for storm total.
The Front Range got hammered. DIA reported a 27.1” storm total making this the 4th snowiest storm on record. On CoCoRaHS I see a lot of 18-24” storm total reports from Castle Rock to Fort Collins. The highest reports are in the 30-38” range in the foothills.
Below are the “before and after” snowpack maps. The Arkansas River basin jumped 10% and the North and South Platte basins jumped 11%. That’s very impressive for a 2-day period this late in the season!
As of today, the Upper San Juan snotel is at 94% and the Wolf Creek Summit snotel is at 106%. Wolf Creek Ski Area has measured 328” year to date.
Skies will be partly cloudy today. Wind prone areas will get gusts to 25mph this afternoon.
Highs will be in the low to mid-40s. Clouds will increase later today ahead tomorrow’s system.
Up at Wolf Creek, along the top, temps will range from the low teens this morning to the low 20s this afternoon. Afternoon winds will peak around 30mph and there could be a brief snowshower, but I don’t expect any accumulation. More snow is on the way tomorrow.
I’ll do a more thorough post later today.
– Shawn
