Greetings and welcome!
I am not sure if it is good or bad that it isn’t two months from now. The storm that has been raining on us since Sunday was a classic one two punch or double barrel low pressure system that is the king of snow producers around here.
The first low pressure system brought rain Sunday morning that turned to snow. We saw close to an inch of snow before it changed back.I saw a picture from up by Old J that had 2″ plus.
People at Rapids said that Lakewood had 2″ early in the day and later reports had it up to almost 4″. We were right on the rain snow line with the big change at about McCaslin Mountain. It would not surprise me to hear much higher totals farther northwest, as they stayed in the snow most of the day.
Anyway, it rained all day Sunday and into Sunday night. The radar returns were useless in trying to quantify how much we got. When it rains that heavily the radar signal gets ‘used up’ being returned before it gets here. My best guess is 2-3″ of rain.
I like playing the somewhat unrealistic ‘What if this were January’ game and wondering how much would have been snow. My wild guess is that we had 2-3″ of rain Sunday, and if 1/3 were snow, we would have a foot of wet snow with a very soggy bottom layer.
The second wave is still going this morning. I would guess that at 1-1.5″ so far. Usually the second low of a double barrel system is mostly snow. This one lined up like it would have been. Add a foot of snow and a little rain to the total.
In my opinion it would have been a storm that would have given us not only a big snow total, but also a big sturdy base from the wet stuff. Thinking about it was kind of exciting.
I checked the El Nino update this morning and we are still expecting and ElNino winter with a 70% plus chance of it. The latest model runs have it for a moderate ElNino.
Some of the weather nerds that I hang out with on the interwebby do not agree. They are not seeing the precursors of a strong ElNino, and are predicting a mild one. Mild is good for us. Don’t write this winter off yet.
The RPI- the Ray preparedness Index is at a -10, as low as it goes. The theory is that if I am ready for winter it won’t come with any vigor. This year after a tsunami of must-do work and the weather turning nasty when I have time to work outside, I will still be splitting firewood and working on winterizing in January. That means lots of cold and snow.
Anyway I wanted to let you know that we had 2-4″ of snow locally Sunday, and that this storm in January would be a barn burner that we would ride on for weeks or months. Time to get back to work.
Have a good one and thank you for visiting!
RJB