Quick update: As of 12:00 am October 29th, we have 9″ of snow on the ground in Greeley, CO. I’m sure our actual snowfall totals are much higher, but due to settling and packing, there’s 9″ of snowpack. Our surface winds have come around to the northwest, which I suspect will dry us out and suppress any heavy snowfall potential for the duration of this event. Models are forecasting anywhere from another 2″-5″ inches for the next 24 hours. All in all, we have gotten (and will likely receive) what was forecasted… 10″-18″.
Posted in Weather.
By matt
– October 29, 2009
I went out during lunch today to measure our snowfall total so far from our ongoing storm system. So far totals are not too impressive out on the Plains and we have about 4″ to 5″ here in Greeley (as of about noon on October 28th). The heaviest snow has been confined to the foothills as one would expect with northeasterly upslope conditions. As the low pressure system slowly moves into our area, I expect the snowfall rates to pick up quite a bit later today into tonight. Forecasts are still calling for up to 18″ of snow… we’ll see. The Storm Prediction Center has put out a mesoscale discussion that covers an area from Greeley northward into Wyoming. They say that snow should pick up in intensity here shortly.
Posted in Weather.
By matt
– October 28, 2009
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A strong cold front pushed through northeastern Colorado during the evening hours of October 28th and moderate rain began to fall shortly after the frontal passage. By 9:30p mountain time the rain turned to light snow in the Greeley area. This photo was taken at 11:00p in Greeley just north of the UNC campus when moderate to heavy snow began to fall and a coating of wet snow began to blanket the ground. The current forecast is for 10″-18″ of snow from this storm system.
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Posted in Weather.
By matt
– October 28, 2009
A strong low pressure system is forecasted to begin to organized and wrap up over Utah on Tuesday and Wednesday October 27 and 28th. Tonight both the NAM and GFS forecast models are in agreement and have the low pressure system tracking slowly across southern Utah and southern Colorado Tuesday, Wednesday, into Thursday morning and then hooking northeastward into far northeastern Colorado and southwest Nebraska on Thursday afternoon/evening. Right now it looks like light snow will begin falling sometime late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning over southeastern Wyoming and it will develop southward into northeastern Colorado shortly after (especially near the foothills). The general consensus is that the heaviest snow will fall Wednesday or Wednesday night over the Colorado Front Range urban corridor. The GFS predicts the heaviest snow to begin falling early Wednesday morning through Wednesday evening while the NAM holds off the heaviest snowfall until Wednesday evening into early Thursday morning. Continued…
Posted in Weather.
By matt
– October 26, 2009
Discovery posted a few trailers for this Sunday’s episode. This was early in the season and I was out with TWISTEX working on the mobile mesonet data acquistion system… we saw some tornadoes and got really stuck in the mud!
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Posted in Storm Chasing.
By matt
– October 23, 2009
| I know, I know, we’ve heard enough about this nut case and the more people publish stuff about him, the more we contribute to his ultimate scheme. However, I want to set the record straight on a few things. I am a trained meteorologist and experienced storm chaser from Colorado and when I first got word of this story it really got my attention. |
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Posted in Matt's Rants.
By matt
– October 22, 2009
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At least 2 tornadoes were observed on 29 April 2009 by myself along with TWISTEX in Floyd County Texas near the town of Cedar Hill. Cedar Hill is a small town east of Plainview on the edge of the Cap Rock. This was my first chase of the 2009 season and I was testing out the new mobile mesonet data acquisition system that I had redesigned during the previous months. The instruments were not yet calibrated and we only had one mesonet system out on this event so I don’t believe any meaningful data was collected. |
| The atmosphere on this day was prime for severe thunderstorm and supercell development. There was a dryline running north to south through the Texas panhandle with an outflow boundary triple point just north and east of Plainview by mid afternoon. The storm of interest developed on the dryline west of Plainview. As it moved off the dryline it interacted with the outflow boundary rapidly causing the storm to go from high-based outflow dominant to low-based tornadic. A NAM sounding from 0000 UTC near Cedar Hill, TX is shown here (click on the image for a closer view). It showed a decent amount of CAPE with 2347 j/kg, a lifted index of -6.7, and a nice looking hodograph with 220 m2/s2 of 0-3 km storm relative helicity, which resulted in an EHI of 2.9. The mid level flow was a bit lacking with only 35 kt at 500 mb, which might have contributed to this day not producing too many tornadoes. If it wasn’t for the storm/boundary interaction there likely would have been no tornadoes in the panhandle on April 29th. |
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Posted in Storm Chasing.
By matt
– October 21, 2009
With weak to moderate El Nino conditions expected for the Winter of 2009-2010, I was curious as to what impacts it might have on seasonal snowfall totals across Colorado. I did a quick study by looking at annual snowfall totals for Greeley, Evergreen, and Breckenridge, CO for the winter seasons of 1972-73 through 2008-09 during La Nina, ENSO-neutral, and El Nino years. I picked each of these locations to represent the Colorado Front Range Plains, Foothills, and Mountains respectively.
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Posted in Weather.
By matt
– October 18, 2009
The Discovery Channel’s Storm Chaser’s episode: “BIGGER IN TEXAS – premieres Oct. 25, 2009″ will feature the April 29th Texas Panhandle tornado event. I was out with Team TWISTEX on this event… and boy it was an interesting day.
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Posted in Storm Chasing.
By matt
– October 16, 2009
Artificial snow is very important to the ski industry especially during drought years, early season, and in the eastern United States where natural snowfall can be sparse at times. Forecasting when snowmaking operations are possible can be tricky using conventional weather forecasts. WxForecastNow has developed wet bulb temperature forecasts for any location in the U.S. up to 6 days out in time. Anytime the wet bulb temperature is 28F or colder, snow guns can blow snow. Check out our site!
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Posted in wxforecastnow.com news.
By matt
– September 18, 2009
TWISTEX: Tim Samaras