The jokes about frigid “stock show weather” won’t work this year.
“There’s nothing in sight that will take us below zero, even at night,” said state climatologist Nolan Doesken of Colorado State University. “In fact, it will hardly go below 20 degrees Fahrenheit at night.”
According a study by Doesken and his crew at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, all the talk about painfully cold weather during the 16-day National Western Stock isn’t rooted in reality.
They analyzed the temperature data for the period Jan. 10-25 for the past 61 years and found that if patterns hold, there’s just a 9.1 percent chance that the weather will be below 25 degrees.
There’s an 80.7 percent chance there will be no snowfall, and just a 0.6 percent chance that more than 10 inches of snow will accumulate during that time.
The National Weather Service’s forecast for this week includes a slight chance of rain Tuesday afternoon and snow that night, lasting through Wednesday night. Highs for most of this week are predicted to be in the 40s. Today could win best in show with forecasts calling for sunny skies and a high in the mid-50s.
But it’s the cold years that make memories. In 1963, both Jan. 11 and 12 recorded lows of minus 25 degrees.The warmest stock show day was recorded last year: 73 degrees on Jan. 22.
