Mostly sunny today/ Some clouds and mostly light showers starting across southwest Colorado tonight, continuing Saturday/ Clearing on Sunday/ Mostly sunny Monday and Tuesday

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Forecast updated for Friday, April 18, 2014

Skies have cleared out this morning as high pressure ridges in again. We remain under a mostly high pressure ridging aloft regime today (mostly sunny), but tonight and Saturday we expect a weakened upper-level low pressure disturbance to move in with some clouds and light showers across the area, along with high snow levels. Southwest Colorado is favored with moderate snow in places, as this system mostly hugs the southern Colorado border with most moisture and dynamics (weak). Skies clear as low pressure moves out on Sunday, then Monday and Tuesday look mostly sunny and warmer, in advance of a cold Pacific low that will be developing. Please be sure to log-in and favorite your resort forecasts so you save time. CM

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7 day to 2 week+ forecast (since 1998) - 23 April to 03 May, 2014 - Another low pressure system moves in next Wednesday through Friday (4 days or so between storms) with potential snowfall, and potentially significant for any area as it may track south also. We may see this followed by high pressure ridging aloft next Saturday and for a few+ days (26th on). Winter is not over yet for the Colorado high country, but it seems to be tapering off, in general. CM

Longer Range Outlook

As of now, April 2014, we are continuing to be affected by an ENSO-Neutral, or La Nada Sea Surface Temperature pattern across the Equatorial Eastern Pacific (SSTs near to slightly below average).



The larger time-scale SST pattern in place right now is a cool phase PDO, or negative PDO, which stands for Pacific Decadal Oscillation. This is a more long term pattern (decades), and it has made any recent years El Nino SST patterns weaker.

We expect the ENSO Neutral, or La Nada pattern (almost a La Nina) to continue, and in the last 30 days we have seen more of a La Nina pattern develop with colder SST's along the eastern Equatorial Pacific and even the region 3.4 always referred to, though less so in 3.4. We are not seeing the trend toward El Nino yet.

Since we are seeing an actual cooling of the eastern Equatorial Pacific in the last month, and not much change in the 3.4 region, we expect this to not bode well for a shift out of a La Nada pattern, yet. If we start to see warming in the region mentioned, then we expect a potential strengthening jet stream across the Pacific, and increased moisture in general for Pacific storms as they move in more directly off the Pacific. We will keep this outlook updated as more information becomes available. If you want to know when the snow is coming (and be able to set unlimited alerts for any resort), within 5 minutes or less of us (our our sources) entering the data into any of our forecasts, be sure to download the app.