Colorado braces for snow: Skiers delight but slippery roads ahead
Travelers heading from the High Plains to the Colorado mountains should be prepared for slushy roads and delays as snow falls in portions of Colorado and Wyoming. A foot or so may pile up over the mountains.
Snow is headed for Colorado. As the setup from Friday to Saturday will demonstrate, a major storm is unnecessary for a significant accumulation in the Rockies. Enough snow will fall to delight snow sports enthusiasts but make for slippery travel over the mountains. There's a chance roads could get dicey in part of the Denver metro area as well, AccuWeather meteorologists say.
The snow will unfold as an area of high pressure slides southeastward across the Great Plains. As the pressure rises, it will create a northeasterly flow of air that will literally climb thousands of feet from the Plains to the Colorado Front Range. As this air ascends, it will cool, and moisture will condense, releasing some rain at first but then a change to snow.
Several inches to a foot of snow will fall on parts of the northern and central Rockies in Colorado from late Friday to early Saturday. A few inches of snow will also extend out to the foothills west of Denver and other metro areas along the Interstate 25 corridor of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming.
"Anyone traveling from the High Plains to the mountains early Saturday morning for a weekend getaway could encounter slippery roads and travel delays," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said. This includes travel along portions of I-70 and I-80.
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Downtown Denver will likely pick up a coating to an inch of snow, mainly on non-paved surfaces late Friday night to Saturday morning.
Farther to the north, in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, a coating to an inch or two of slushy snow will fall with locally higher amounts possible.
Travel along much of the I-25 corridor will be wet to slushy, but there will be some exceptions.
"A narrow band of heavier snow may extend eastward from the mountains to the foothills and the Colorado Plains," Pydynowski said. "It is possible this band could extend across part of the Denver metro area."
Areas made wet by the slushy snow and natural melting during the day Saturday will freeze Saturday night.
By Sunday afternoon, much warmer conditions will build over the region, with any leftover snow prone to rapid melting. Temperatures are forecast to surge well into the 60s in Denver, Cheyenne and Fort Collins. Widespread highs in the 70s are in store for Monday as warm air building west of the Rockies expands eastward.
Farther south, only a small slushy accumulation seems likely in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from late Friday night to Saturday morning.
Snow is not uncommon during April along the High Plains, Foothills and Rockies. Denver, which is about a mile above sea level, historically averages about 9 inches of snow in April, according to the National Weather Service. Some years even bring a bit of snow in May, when the historical average is 1-2 inches. Denver tends to receive more snow in the spring than it does during the middle of the winter.
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