Dave Frasier, it's our last visit for the year today.
Yeah, yeah, I just asked day Rob. That's to confirm. I kind of figured out with both Christmas and New Year's falling on Wednesday, So let's enjoy it today. By the way, happy one hundreds. What a great institution.
Thank you very much. We do deserve to be institutionalized over here at KOA, and so we appreciate them. Warm witches on our hundredth birthday. All right, first off, let's just cut to the chase. What are our chances for a white Christmas.
Yeah, it's not great. Unfortunately, we're just in this big kind of dry pattern and it doesn't look to break down. The mountains have seen some pushes of snow. We had one last night, they'll get another push come Monday, late Sunday Monday, and then there could be another one late in the day on Christmas in the mountains. So if you do look on you know, if you want a white Christmas and you're in Denver and along the Front Range, it will be snow in the mountains. But for the
Front Range, it's just not looking great. At this point. We have nothing but fifty five to sixty Greek temperatures expected all the way through the holiday, so it's just not there for us. So if you got me snow on the ground, I got patches here and that are hiding in the shadows. Hopefully that'll still be around come Christmas morning.
Well you know what, though, I gotta tell you, winter with fifty to sixty degrees doesn't suck. You know, I don't hate that. I actually kind of enjoy that. So I know the kids, if they get new sleds for Christmas, will be a little disappointed. But you're just gonna have to go to the mountains to find that. Now, I got a bunch of questions to ask you from our listeners, and the first of which is a really really good one.
I love this question. Can you please ask Dave what is the proper way to measure snow here at eight thousand feet. I wait until the storm is over and will measure, let's say, eighteen inches. My neighbor will repeatedly clean off an area and measure multiple times and add those numbers together and we'll come up with twenty four inches, in your opinion, which is more accurate.
The clearing off actually does give you the total snow that fell during the event, because if you wait until the end, especially if it's a heavy wet snow, the snow's going to compact and it's going to melt a little bit. So you're better off doing variations. Same as through for shoveling. We talk about that all the time. We're dealing with. You know, a foot or two feet of snow, don't wait for it to finish, go out
and chip away at it. So there is if you go to the National Weather Service website and just google National Weather Service and you'll go to the Boulder office, there is on there you can find a spot where they do tell you how to officially do it you want. It's called the whiteboard, and you have to put the whiteboard out, you have to measure it and has to be in the area. But you know, listen, snow measurements.
There's an official way to do it. But the bottom line is as you measure it your neighborhood and your next neighbor you're going to find subtle differences in measurements. But if you were going to do it for the totality of an event, I would say you would chip away at it, sweep it off, measure what falls measure the next one that falls every six hours or so.
Here's one for you, Dave. How does the January weather look like? Blizzards are mild? Like now, Merry Christmas. I guess he's asking really about what long range weather patterns we're seeing, right, Yeah.
I mean the long range weather patterns haven't changed. We're going to be in an out medio pattern, which means that Denver in the front range should do okay by the end of the season, meaning we'll have close to our fifty three inches of snow. As you know, of October helped us out, no excusan November helped us out. We're ahead for the year. We're at a little more than forty percent of the entire season, and we still have all of January, February, March, April or two snow
this months, so we're in pretty good shape. And the snow pack in the mountains is still running at more than one hundred percent. So this pattern we're in is going to have prolonged dry periods, long periods like we're seeing now. We'll see through Christmas. But that doesn't mean we won't get bouts of snow like we did back in early November when we got that four days of measurable snow and on that Friday we had almost ten inches. So you know, it never really gives you the day
to day pattern. But I think overall, when things are said and done, we'll find a near average snow season.
All right, here's the question for you. These are good questions today. What is it about the geographical triangle between Colorado Springs, Canyon City and Pueblo. It seems to render it a precipitation desert. The rain and snow seem to circumvent this area unless the weather comes in from the east in some fashion.
Yeah, So that's again topography. The geographical features, our mountains, our foothills are divided like the Palmer Divide. All of those features playing into what we call micro climate. So depending on where you are, wind will favor you in one direction but not in another. And that area is at a lower elevation. That is correct, that area down there from Colorado Springs, Canyon City over the pebble, you're
going to want a straight easterly flow. If we have a big storm that sets up with the northeasterly flow for Denver and the Palmer Divide, we do very very well with snow. But on the other side of the divide, going into Colorado Springs and continuing to head south, that same wind direction does not favor snow into those areas. So wind direction, wind speed is key. And unfortunately that area is just kind of if you look at it on a map, you'll see that it is kind of
sitting down on a flat spot. It needs really a straight easterly wind and sometimes that's hard to get well.
And we have a question from another part of Denver or another part of Colorado is kind of the same thing. Ask Dave why the northern portion of the Front Range, Johnstown, BERTHETT is a desert while Denver in south is wet. Is it the same answer only on the other end.
Yeah, same thing. It's all dependent on windflow. Those areas are east of I twenty five, so they're not close enough to benefit from the higher elevations west of EYE twenty five as you approach the foothills, so they don't get as much lift. A northeasterly wind should get them some snow, but they won't get the depth of snow that you will as you go west of I twenty five, and that area is in a dead spot because the
same thing is true. We talk about the Palmer Divide that rides in elevation as you leave Denver go over Monument Hill and then down into Colorado Springs. Well, there's also the Cheyenne Ridge runs east to west, and that is another area that if we have a west, a north or northwest of the wind coming up and over the ridge out of Wyoming down into Fort Collins Loveland and heading towards the Johnstown and Berthed areas, that's a downsloping wind, that's a drying wind, and they get nothing.
And you'll see me and hear me talk about that all the time when you see me talking about snowfall totals and you see this big area of nothing. You go Denver. Like the last event we had, Denver got you had to get into the city to find two inches. You had to go southwest of the city to find four inches. But if you left the city and went north Buckkiss nothing.
Yeah, this is an odd question, and I don't know if this is in your field of expertise or not. Dave, has the magnetic field changed because waterfowl migration has changed a lot, and the weather as well. I mean, I guess they're asking, does a magnetic field how much does that play in weather?
Yeah, that is a little out of my expertise. I mean it does. We know it's changed over time. As far as you know, that would be a little lofty for me to try and figure out. I'd have to go do some studying, and I finished college a long time ago, so I wouldn't be able to answer that with any type of authority. So I'll let that work pass.
Yeah. I appreciate that, Dave, because I don't know it either. Last question from our text line, Dave, should we do some watering because of how dry it is and will continue to be? Do we need to water our trees?
Yes, yeah, no question about it. It never hurts in these dry periods in winter because you're not getting the benefit of higher humidity. The air is very, very dry. Even though the trees and the shrubs are dormant, they could use a little bit of a drink, So yeah, you could do a little bit that. Don't worry about your grass. Grass is con dormant, that's not an issue. But any trees and shrubs that are healthy looking and you want to protect them. It never hurts to run
a little water on them. You don't have to do it daily, but just feed them a little bit here and there during dry period. So especially with this stretch we're going to be having. I've got fifty to sixty degree days, all.
Right, Dave Frasier, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, all that good stuff to you, and we'll talk to you next year, buddy, see you next year.
Yeah yeah, Happy holiday school all right
Thank you, Dave Frasier.