A teaser of a snowstorm arriving in Southwest Colorado on Tuesday night and moving through the region Wednesday will only whet the appetite for what’s to come later in the week.
The system arriving midweek is expected to deposit 1 to 3 inches of snow at higher elevations in the San Juan Mountains, said Brianna Bealo, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.
But a large pacific storm is likely to drop from the Gulf of Alaska south, off the coast of northern California later this week, sending an atmospheric river toward eastern Utah and western Colorado.
The NWS is calling for heavy snowfall starting Thursday evening – 1 to 2 feet in Silverton and upward of 3 feet in the higher peaks. The storm is predicted to blanket the region in moisture through Friday and into Saturday morning. The lower elevations, such as Durango and Cortez, are likely to see rain as the storm arrives, although it may turn to snow.
Bealo said the storm is not expected to be particularly cold, meaning the snow is likely to be on the heavier side.
“Were not talking concrete, but it’s definitely going to be wetter, heavier snow than we’d typically get,” she said.
Given the perilously anemic snow accumulation this winter, the storm could be just the shot-in-the-arm that the San Juans snowpack needs. Still, it would take an average of 5 inches of snow-water equivalent across the San Miguel-Dolores-Animas river basins to bring the water supply up to the 30-year median.
“So far this year, all of these systems have been going too far north and moisture is getting wrung out by the coastal ranges or Sierra Nevadas,” she said. “With the track that it’s taking now, that moisture is actually going to be able to make it all the way to us.”
The Colorado Department of Transportation is warning drivers to prepare for winter road conditions. Maintenance crews started 24-hour snow shifts Monday and will be pretreating and plowing roads as needed for the duration of the storm, spokeswoman Adair Christensen said in an email.
Christensen warned of likely closures along mountain passes so that crews can conduct avalanche mitigation work, even after the system has moved out of the area.
Closures and road conditions can be found at www.cotrip.org.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
