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Forecast Discussion:
According to the Sunday surface map (Figure 1) - we seem to have high pressure around. (I did *not* photoshop in all those H's). We are dry with abnormally high temperatures. Let's look at the next storm...
The longer range forecast:
The big western upper air ridge finally begins to break down at the end of the week (the red trough cutting into the western U.S. in Figure 2). A weak trough will kick up strong winds Wednesday (Figure 3) - then the main-event-cold front hits Friday afternoon. After that we do get a chance of snow Saturday evening, Sunday morning and a hint of a Christmas morning snow (just a 10% chance of precipitation, don't rent a photographer yet).
The GFS (Figure 4) has snow down to Lyons and Boulder by Christmas Day with more snow down to Loveland north of us. From the ECMWF model (Figure 5) we get, not the snowfall between now and then, but the forecast of snow on the ground for Christmas Day. We are in the 1/2 to 1 inch area with good mountain snows and even a stripe east of us off into Kansas. You can also check this map to see where friends around the country may see snow. There aren't many locations due to all the warmth this week over much of the nation.
