Beautiful weather interrupted near weeks end
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Spectacular fall weather will continue through most of the weekend before a storm affects us sometime on Sunday and Monday. There is uncertainty as to whether precipitation starts early or late in the day Sunday, but the heaviest precipitation should occur through the overnight hours and early in the morning Monday as the cold air associated with the storm sweeps through the area and lowers snow levels. Most of the accumulating snow should be confined to above 9000 feet, but we may see snowflakes in town as well.
Showers will persist through the day Monday in cool and unstable northwest flow behind the departing storm. Tuesday should be pleasant after a cold morning start before there is again disagreement between the models for midweek. The American GFS model is predicting a fast-moving wave from the Pacific interacting with a wave traveling southward from the Canadian Plains and producing some precipitation late Wednesday into Thursday. The European ECMWF, on the other hand, rebuilds a ridge over the inter-mountain west, leading to dry weather. Both models, however, show some of the cool air from the north filtering over our region late in the workweek and possibly into Saturday.
Both models also have that ridge strengthening by mid-next weekend and dominating our weather into the following week, leading to more warm and dry weather.
