Feet of Snow in the Recent Rockies Blizzard

Many of you have heard about the recent massive blizzard that quite literally buried portions of Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska. Particularly heavy amounts of snow were recorded in Wyoming and Colorado. 

Take a look at the NWS Boulder snowfall reports map from the storm. 

Compare the dots on the map to the legend. A whopping 24+ inches of snow was observed in many areas, including metropolitan Denver. Cheyenne, Wyoming got the most snow of any city, with a grand total of 30.8 inches (2nd all-time for the area).

This amount of snow was historic, and at the Denver Airport, 27.1 inches fell, making it the highest 3-day total since 1995 (see table below).

As you could imagine, this amount of snow had a major impact on the airport, closing all runways, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of flights over a 2-day period.

So...what caused this massive amount snow? The answer is orographic precipitation. The graphic below shows this effect.

We are actually quite familiar with this effect here in Washington. The frequent rain shadows caused by the Olympic and Cascade Mountains are due to the orographic effect.

In the case of this recent blizzard, the prevailing winds were from a low center in the Central US. As the winds traversed the climbing foothills of the Rockies, the air condensed, resulting in the heavy precipitation, which due to cold temperatures, fell as heavy snow. Gusty winds didn't help the situation, as blizzard conditions were prevalent across much of the area during the storm.

Some excellent footage documenting the impacts of this winter storm can be found on the Live Storms Media YouTube Channel (click here). I highly recommend watching some of these videos!

Speaking of cold weather...Tuesday morning was unseasonably chilly in Western Washington, with lows in the upper 20s to low 30s. Expect another chilly morning on Wednesday, with lows of 28-34 degrees. The Puyallup Weather Underground forecast shows a good day Wednesday, then the return of rain by Thursday afternoon.