Another round of moderate snow for the mountains, wind for the front-range: Sun night to Mon night

12/29/24 10:30am: Alright lets now look at the forecast for the next short-wave (storm system) slated to impact the north-central mountains from late tonight through tomorrow night: moderate / heavy snow for the mountains with strong wind in spots. For Den/Bou and the lower elevations turning very windy tomorrow (High Wind Watch in place).

For the north-central mountains the next round of snow will be primarily from 11pm Sun to 11pm Mon: generally 6-12” for the local ski areas with highest amounts near Loveland Pass to Jones / Berthoud Passes, Winter Park and especially upper parts of IPW up into western RMNP (up 14” in spots). Park Range north of Steamboat may also get up to 14” in spots (but more like 8-12” for Steamboat ski area). Most of the meaningful snow will be from Breck north (less towards Aspen/CB and even less south).

Much colder air will move into the mountains after 2am tomorrow morning, so should go back to cold smoke, instead of the warm nasty snow (right-side up at least). But the wind will do a number on the snow in certain spots.

Turning very windy in the mountains from about 2pm today through 8pm Mon: northwesterly wind-gusts of 30-60 mph in spots (strongest over the Front Range mountains, along/east of the Cont. Divide).

For Den/Bou warm and breezy today (high temps in the upper 50s). Then turning colder and much windier tomorrow as the northwest jet-stream moves overhead (but with the strong downslope flow, no precip at all). For Den/Bou and the front-range urban corridor windiest conditions will be from 8am-8pm Mon: High Wind Watch in place for west / northwest wind-gusts of 50-80 mph, strongest in/near the foothills. Doesn't look quite as strong as the models were showing yesterday, luckily but still very strong / maybe damaging wind in spots and high fire danger, there could be some preemptive power outages.

First image below shows forecast total snowfall over the next 42 hours (5am this morning to 11pm Mon) from latest HRRR model. Second and third images are latest forecast slides from Den/Bou NWS office (they seem to have good handle on the forecast as well). Third image loop shows the forecast wind-gusts over the next 48hrs from latest HRRR model (static image shows forecast wind-gusts at 12pm tomorrow).