Today’s forecast is about as clear as it gets: snow.
The National Weather Service is expecting 10 to 18 inches in Denver, the plains and the foothills by daybreak Friday. “Another winter storm to slam the Front Range of Colorado,” read a winter-storm warning issued by the weather service Wednesday night.
Friday and Saturday remained a wild card – the storm could linger and pile up an additional foot in areas, or it could spin out over the Eastern Plains, meteorologists said.
Snow will begin at midday today and will fall heavily at times, possibly hitting rush hour, said Jim Kalinas, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.
“We’re still showing a pretty good storm system,” Kalinas said, “and quite a bit of moisture and wind with it.”
If the storm heads east Friday, Denver might see only a few additional inches of snow, said Doug Wesley, a senior meteorologist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
“It looks like we’ll get a break on Friday, even Friday night,” Wesley said.
He said it was too early to assess the likelihood of additional snow in Denver or at Denver International Airport on Saturday, but at least one model predicted “significant” additional precipitation.
“I’ve seen that before and I’m a little leery of it,” Wesley said, adding he is not yet convinced of heavy snow Saturday. “A very minor shift would put the snow out in Kansas.”
The roads are likely to be a mess tonight and Friday morning as drivers navigate fresh snow, said Klaus Wolter, a meteorologist with the University of Colorado and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Wolter said he’s perplexed by the dual December storms.
“This is really very weird,” he said. “It’s spooky. We’ve never had two big storms in a row midwinter like this. Never.”
Wolter said his gut feeling is that this afternoon and tonight the winter storm won’t deliver quite the “oomph” of last week’s blizzard.
But this may not be the end of the winter storms. The unsettled global weather conditions contributing to last week’s storm and this one – including a system of thunderstorms over the Indian Ocean – may continue into January, Wolter said.
This year, a weak El Niño system has formed in the tropical Pacific Ocean, and that normally delivers dry Decembers and Januarys to Colorado, Wolter said.
Today’s storm looks more like El Niño’s springtime storms in Colorado, Wolter said.
“Sometime after all this is over, we’ll get into those winter doldrums,” he said.
Predictions for this storm aren’t likely to be far off, said Bob Henson, a spokesman for Boulder’s UCAR and author of the “Rough Guide to Weather.”
Weather models have improved significantly since 1987, when Denver forecasters called for 2 to 3 feet of snow March 17.
Not even 2 inches arrived, Henson said, “but that’s less and less likely today.”
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-954-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
