Fans planning a game of flag football at halftime of the Super Bowl are best advised to wear layers for that contest.
The roulette wheel of Front Range weather has come up cold Sunday with a frigid, foggy conditions in the morning paving the way for cool, sometimes windy afternoon.
Denver was sitting at 13 degrees as of 8 a.m. with patches of light snow and freezing drizzle frosting windshields across the city. Things will warm up a bit as the day goes on, but the city will max out in the high 30s, according to a National Weather Service forecast. Wind gusts as high as 20 mph could add some bite to the chill.
Sunday morning’s moisture comes courtesy of a could front that has been hovering over northern Nebraska for around a week, Chad Gimmestad, a Weather Service forecaster based in Boulder, said.
“We have a strong cold front wobbling back and forth up there,” he said Sunday morning. “We’ve mostly been on the warm side of it. That flashed back in here last night.”
The front should wobble back to the northeast overnight –when the low temperature is expected to hit 31 degrees in Denver–before returning to bring another round of cold, wet conditions Monday evening, Gimmestad said.
Monday should be mostly sunny with a high in the mid 50s before the cold front pushes back across the northeastern part of the state after dark. Then, temperatures will drop into the 20s and the odd the area will get more precipitation will be around 60 percent.
“Tomorrow night there could be some travel impacts from light snow,” Gimmestad said. “It could get cold enough for things to get a little icy.”
By mid-week, things should warm up again. Wednesday and Thursday should both see highs in the 50s, the Weather Service predicts.
Despite the lack of major snowstorms this winter, the Denver area isn’t experiencing conditions too outside the norm at this point, Gimmestad said. Since Nov. 1, the city has seen 1.06 inches of moisture, he said. The normal allotment for that time period if 1.41 inches.
Snowpack for the South Platte River Basin, which supplies water to cities up and down the Front Range, is 88 percent of normal. The situation is more dire when viewed from a statewide perspective. Total snowpack in Colorado is 61 percent of normal at this point in the winter, Gimmestad said Sunday. The southwestern part of the state is having a particularly dry year, with snowpack sitting at 33 percent of normal in the San Juan Mountains, according to the forecaster. What is troubling there is the region is known for getting much of its snowfall from mid-winter storms.
“There winter is starting to slip away,” Gimmestad said. “The good news is reservoir storage is about normal.”
Winter Weather Advisories for the northern mountains are in effect through 11AM today as an additional 2-6” will fall. Visibilities over the urban corridor & plains will be reduced due to fog this morning as some surfaces will be icy due to freezing drizzle.
— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder)
