With snow up to 50 inches in areas, Colorado’s latest storm cycle brought snowpack above normal in the northern mountains 

Since Valentine’s Day, several storms have brought six straight powder days and up to 50 inches of snow to some Colorado ski resorts — having varied but mostly positive impacts on the state’s snowpack. 

“This storm brought quite a lot of snow to all the mountain ranges,” said Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist and director of the Colorado Climate Center. “In parts of the state, it really helped out a lot, and in other places, they are going to need a lot more to catch up.

The news is the best for Colorado’s northern mountains where most resorts were sitting just below the snowpack average heading into the weekend. Now, following repeated snow, most of the region’s resorts are sitting at or slightly above normal. 

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For example, the last six days and 50 inches of snow have brought Vail Mountain from 81% to 103% of its 30-year normal, according to OpenSnow.com. Vail reportedly received the most snow in the state between Friday and Wednesday.   

“There’s not too much to be concerned about up in the northern mountains,” Schumacher said. 

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However, the further south and west you go, the less positive the outlook is, which is consistent with what Colorado typically sees in a La Nina winter, Schumacher noted. 

“It was good snow (down in the San Juans, on the Grand Mesa and in the Elk Mountains), but not nearly enough to make up the big deficits that were there from earlier in the winter,” Schumacher said. “One good storm in February helped, but it wasn’t a drought buster or season changer. You expect a lot more storms than that during this time of year.”

With snow accumulation typically highest from January through March, it is a critical time for Colorado’s snowpack, Schumacher said. 

“This is the time of year when we need to have the storms coming more frequently to get the snowpack up where you want it to be,” he added. “We need the storms to keep coming to get that to get the snowpack up and to get the water supply looking a little bit better.”

Colorado’s mountain snowpack acts as a natural reservoir, providing the vast majority of the state’s water supply for municipal use, agriculture, recreation and more. 

While the storm is expected to bring one more dump on Thursday night — that could bring 5 to 10 inches, according to OpenSnow.com — another prolonged dry and warm period is predicted to hit Colorado’s resorts this weekend. 

This warm, dry weather will continue to mostly draw concerns in the southern mountains and the Colorado River Basin, Schumacher said. 

“The streamflow forecasts for the Colorado River Basin were not well before this storm, they were looking quite bad,” he said. “This storm will certainly help with the water supply forecast. But then now we’ll have another 10 days, maybe more, of dryness.”

As of Tuesday, the water supply in the Colorado River Headwaters was just above the 30-year normal in the basins around Kremmling and Eagle. Further west, in the Roaring Fork basin and near Glenwood Springs, the supply was still below average. 

While it’s hard to predict what March will bring, the month will be important to overall snowpack accumulation as well. 

“If the pattern does turn back around to be more active, you know there’s still a chance to catch up on some of those things,” Schumacher said. “It’s a little too early to say how that’s going to shake out (for the remainder of the season) … and there’s some hints that maybe it starts to get a little more active into early March again, but that is a little ways off.”

Snowpack and avalanche danger

The significant shifts in snowpack over the past week have also brought drastic changes to avalanche danger across Colorado’s High Country. 

“We’re seeing some of the largest avalanches that we’ve seen all season,” said Brian Lazar, deputy director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. 

Heading into the weekend, there were “a lot of fairly pronounced and fragile weak layers” following the prolonged dry spells stretching across January and February, according to Lazar. 

“Then we started to load them with the return of snowfall,” he said. “That Valentine’s Day storm came so fast and furious that it pushed those weak layers to failure in many locations. We had warnings in place from the Wyoming to the New Mexico border at one point.”  

As snow continued to fall throughout the weekend, the state’s avalanche center received reports of both natural and human-triggered avalanches. 

“Some of these avalanches are being triggered from some distance away are what we would call remote triggers, which is what’s worrisome,” Lazar said. “That’s a really clear sign of very dangerous conditions.” 

With this danger, Lazar noted that backcountry recreators should give even wider buffers to slopes steeper than 30 degrees. 

As the snowfall ends this weekend and warmer, drier weather returns, Lazar warned there will be a slow stabilization period for the state’s snowpack.

“The snowpack is going to need several more days to adjust to such rapid change,” he said. “We’re expecting an uptick in wet avalanche activity as we go through the weekend into early next week with the return of sunshine and warmer temperatures.” 

The snow that dropped may also hide obvious signs of instability, Lazar added

“It’s going to be a whole different flavor of avalanches,” Lazar said. 

Information on current avalanche danger can be found at Colorado.Gov/Avalanche. 

According to OpenSnow.com, snow totals from Thursday night through Wednesday morning are as follows. The percentage reflects each resort’s snowpack compared to its 30-year normal as of Wednesday. 

Vail Mountain – 50 inches (103%) 

Loveland Ski Area – 48 inches (101%)

Winter Park – 46 inches (114%) 

Steamboat Resort – 40 inches (110%) 

Copper Mountain Resort – 40 inches (117%) 

Breckenridge Ski Resort – 40 inches (110%) 

Aspen Highlands — 40 inches (86%) 

Silverton — 39 inches (93%)  

Arapahoe Basin Ski Area – 35 inches (107%)

Keystone Resort – 35 inches (102%) 

Beaver Creek – 34 inches (112%)

Purgatory — 33 inches (64%) 

Telluride — 31 inches (95%) 

Snowmass – 30 inches (83%) 

Ski Cooper – 28 inches (106%)

Aspen Mountain – 24 inches (91%) 

Buttermilk – 22 inches (87%)