I dont think we’ve ever seen a situation here where 2″ per hour snowfall was pummeling literally ALL of us simultaneously. As you can see, incredibly heavy snow was falling across nearly the entire Denver Metro area for hours Wednesday night. The radar animation below captures the entire event from the first raindrops to the last snowflakes. We knew there would be some 2″ per hour snowfall rates with this event, but we did not expect them to be as widespread or as long-lasting as what unfolded Wednesday evening. Once the rain changed to snow, it dumped for hours, and we really mean dumped. At our station, we recorded 0.35″ of rainfall before we fully turned over to snow! Rainfall began around 3 to 4PM in most locales but did not change-over fully to accumulating snow until around 7PM (and even later in some spots). That facet of this storm was remarkable in its own right and should have been more of a red flag to us forecasters. It’s very hard to get all the ingredients for precipitation together in our area BUT somehow not have the cold air rearing to go. In the off-instances where rain does fall at the onset, these bigger precipitation events will almost always change-over to snow immediately this time of year. Precipitation began with several hours of steady rainfall - something that is extremely rare for the month of December in the Front Range. It’s clear that the “cement” we received last night is not a regular occurrence this time of year.ĭespite being off by a factor of two for snow amounts in many locations, the broader aspects of the storm did play out as we had anticipated Wednesday evening. However, the amount of moisture that dumped on the area was extraordinary - this was the 4th largest December precipitation event for the city since the late 1800s. The snow is not all that impressive - it doesn’t even rank in the top 25 for largest December snow events for the city. Officially Boulder reported 9.3″ of snow from this event alongside a whopping 1.26″ of precipitation (that includes rain and melted snow equivalent). Yeah - that’s terrible forecast verification overall, though parts of eastern Denver are not waking up that surprised this morning! Greenvalues indicate our forecast verified to within 1″. Our snowfall forecast map for the event is shown below with storm totals overlaid. The heaviest dumping occurred in and near the Foothills of Jefferson County, the area we expected to see the most snow all along (but of course, not quite that much). Anywhere from 3 to 16″ of soupy snow fell from Loveland, though the Denver area, and south to Colorado Springs. We discuss Boulder and Denver weather every single day on BoulderCAST Premium. Sign up today to get access to our daily forecast discussions every morning, complete six-day skiing and hiking forecasts powered by machine learning, access to all our Front Range specific weather models, additional storm updates and much more!Įt’s dive right into the booming snow totals first.
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