Time to bring on Dave Frasier. He is Fox thirty one's chief meteorologist.
Dave.
I was in beautiful Arizona yesterday, but I hear things were a little dicey. Here was the wind expected to be that bad.
So you know the open that you run for me every week, the last line is or whatever Mother Nature throwed you away. While Mother Nature was throwing some curve balls yesterday, So you're lucky you missed it. So I will tell you. I'll just give you a brief recap of what happened because you were out of town. But I heard a rod talking about the nightmare dealing with the wind, and you got comments from viewers in Commerce City.
The wind was in the forecast for several days that that wind speeds were supposed to be around fifteen to thirty. At around noon yesterday, as I was eyeballing the forecast, new data came in and everything changed, literally changed and flipped to where the storm coming in over Grand Junction was supposed to go to northeast Colorado, and it was
supposed to whip up the wind. But in that position towards jewels Burg in the northeast, we were just going to get some brief passing rain and snow showers, and that was going to be a some snow on the eastern plains, and yes, wind would be blowing. When we looked at the forecast around this time yesterday, all of the models, all of them sometimes you get model inconsistency, every single one of them picked up on a change in the storm track and took that storm and increased
its intensity and plunked it in southeast Colorado. That is a sweet spot for blizzard conditions over eastern Colorado. And because the storm deepened, the wind speeds increased from fifteen to thirty to potentially fifty to seventy miles per hour. The snow also increased. Because now the storm is further south, we're tapping into colder air. We're bringing it down from the north.
Had that storm stayed north, all of the cold air would have stayed right we wouldn't have been able to produce as much snow. So because of that jog in
the position, everything changed. We were literally scrambling at two o'clock updating our forecast to get ready for our broadcast at three point thirty, letting people know that we were going to be on a pinpoint weather alert day because of the snow and the blowing snow, And within a few minutes of that, the National Weather Service triggered the blizzard warnings for the Eastern Plains and then back pushed that to the Palmer Divide, Castle Rock and Elizabeth, wo
and Kyowa and Parker. They originally weren't in it until the wind started to roar. Now, you don't need a lot of snow. You really don't even need falling snow to have a blizzard.
If there's been previous snow and the wind strong enough, you can get blizzard conditions. So we sent our Greg getto and the Beast out east along eighty six and we had him go from Castle Rock. Everything was fine, the roads were just wet. As the snow was falling, it was white. But as the sun set, it wasn't about the depth of the snow. It was about the wind of the snow and the visibility. As Greg left Elizabeth and traveled to Kyowa, he literally went through a
wall of snow where it was whiteout conditions. They ended up closing the road. As you guys have been reporting all morning. I seventy is still closed because they're battling the land in some blowing and drifting, and the visibility was just gone. Our own Charlot Turner was out on I seventy around the Strasburg, Bennett and Deer Trail area and it was just visible and it was just a wind.
And I will tell you statistically that between Pie Day three fourteen and the nineteenth of March is when we generally get our biggest storms, and those tend to be blizzard conditions. Now, they don't always have to be deep snow. Of course, ars twenty two years ago today Denver had its worst blizzard. It was the Saint Patrick's State blizzard started on Saint Patrick's Day ended today on the nineteenth,
and Denver got thirty five inches of snow. Out Here on the south side we had five feet of snow. Woodthills had six and seven feet of snow, and drifts were to the lowest rooflines of people's. People were cutting off their roofs down onto the snow and into the streets and the city shut down for three days. Yeah, it's kind of that sweet spot. So we thankfully we
doted that component. But no, I will tell you yesterday Mother Nature threw us a curveball, and we were tracking that wind in that snow, and it was miserable, especially east of by twenty five.
This is why you all need to download the Pinpoint app, the Pinpoint Weather app, because I it changes and as soon as they update their forecast, it updates on the app. So if you want literally like what is happening right now, just open the app and check it out. I got a text from someone earlier that said, is it an excessively dry March? They feel like this has been a really dry March. How are we doing?
So it's a great question. I looked that up. So officially, prior to last night, we had no measurable snow out at the airport. Remember, March is, statistically, over the history of our records, more than one hundred years, the snowiest month and more than eight inches of snow. The airport officially got zero point eight inches and that's all the snow we've had this month. If we don't get any more snow for the rest of the month, it would
be the sixth driest March on record. So I checked that because of that, right the month was before we went into the month of thirty day Outlook or March. Was it for two be temperatures to be close to normal but probably lower than normal for moisture. I did look at long range models as far other as I can see on our stuff to get us through about the twenty ninth of the month. There's nothing ahead through
the twenty ninth. We might be able to hook a little bit of a storm, maybe rain, maybe snow, because it's still March. Don't forget, April's our second snowiest month. We might be able to hook something around the twenty nine thirtieth, the thirty first, But to get a storm that late in the month of March to make up you know, eight inches of sea right, probably not going to happen.
Well, I remember last April. I remember last April, you and I talking about over the last few years, April has sort of superseded March as the snowiest month that we've had, and we've had some really big spring storms in April, and we've talked about whether changing climate is responsible for that, if it's going to change our snow patterns. I mean, did you feel like that could still be a possibility here?
Yeah, I mean, never give up on a sea And as I always say, it, and actually, not only has April done a little better than March, February has outperformed its normal statistics. And it's because of the big storm we had late last year and the month of February that were actually still on track at this point for seasonal snow. Now again, with March and April being your biggest totals, if we don't get measurable snow through the end of March and April ends up coming up short,
then the season is going to come up short. We need the support of these next two months, and I think March is going to let us down. April may be able to help us out a little bit.
Well, I saw the snow totals though they're they're looking pretty good right now, especially on the in the Front Range.
Yeah, I mean the snow pack and everything is still looking great. Remember, we load through about the I think it's the eleventh of April, So you load as much snow as you can on the Front Range mountains and in the mountains, and then you start, you know, you start to get ready for the runoff and what that means for water supply, reservoirs filling up, what the you know, what the King looks like the river flows, you know, all that stuff.
So a question, what is your uh, what is your own personal pagan celebration of tomorrows spring equinox is going to look like Dave Frasier.
At three oh one in the morning, probably a lot of snoring.
Is that when the actual spring equinox happens.
Yeah, yeah, three oh one tomorrow morning is wind spring, So when you wake up tomorrow, we will be in spring. It's not it's not one of those times where where you know, the spring arrives at nine o'clock at night, So really do you call the whole day the spring equinox? Now it rids at three oh one, so almost a full day of spring arrives small and it will feel like spring. I know you were asking about the forecast.
Yeah, what do we gotta coming.
With the news. So you know, one of the things we've been dealing with is, you know, when we have win which is this is kind of the windy season. When we have wind and everything's dormant as it still is, you know, fire danger becomes a concern. What we need to do is start the growing season, and that's we're getting there. You know, we got to wait a little longer. But what we need to do that is get a little walking, to get a little more sun. I know we have that for the next seven to ten days.
The outlook is I have one ten percent chance of a shower late on Saturday. Otherwise we're just gonna have some passing cloud's gonna be a little breezy from time to time. But I think we're near sixty for the next three days, probably low sixties on Saturday, near sixty Sunday, and then starting on Monday, the temperatures kick up to the seventies. I'm talking low to mid seventies through the
middle of next week. Nice, and I can see us potentially reaching almost eighty degrees by the end of next week.
That's exciting.
I like it.
What I just heard was is that I can get my lawn work done this weekend, is what I heard.
Yeah, do my press. Here's some of yeah, or some of the things you didn't get through in the fall, some of that dead brush trimming or whatever. Yeah. I think you're going to have a great weekend as long as you can get away from the TV and watching march Medas.
You know what, I am hardcore for the first couple of rounds. But then I'm sort of like, I just watched the games I care about, So I'm okay with that. You know, I can take a break to watch it games that I actually care about. So if the weather's nice this weekend, I'm all about it. I'm all about it. Yeah, Dave Frasier, you can see. Yeah, you can see his work on Fox thirty one, our partner. He does a great job, even though sometimes this weather forecasting business just
isn't as easy as it needs to be. I think Dave appreciate you.
Yeah, I don't mind the challenge. I don't mind the challenge. So enjoy spring. Welcome the new season. Is this way?
Is this like actual spring? Or is it fake spring? We'll have another winter I can't keep up in Colorado.
Yeah, well, don't hang your hat. This is over, but enjoy the next ten days, all right.
Don't put your sweaters away, but you can put him away for ten days. Dave Fraser, good to.
Talk to you.
We'll talk to you again next week.
Thanks.