Here are a few grabs from our Neighborhood Weather Network this morning, really pretty out there this morning!

I was covering snowy roads on Wednesday in Black Forest (it was miserably cold and windy and like a skating rink) and a lot of people told me they knew this was going to be a bad winter. I’m not a native, so I don’t necessarily get “the feeling” that it is or is not going to be a bad winter, so I rely on climatologists to give us a better idea of what we can expect. However, we aren’t getting too much guidance out of the NOAA U.S. Winter Outlook. For a link to this year’s NOAA U.S. Winter Outlook Click Here.
It says equal chances of wetter and drier for Colorado. But you can read up on the effect El Nino could have on the U.S.

After some record-setting temperatures Sunday, winter weather returns to Colorado Tuesday and Wednesday. Now is a good time to prepare for that weather, especially considering this week is Winter Weather Preparedness Week in Colorado.

Click here for a link to National Weather Service tips for staying safe when the weather gets rough.

You gotta love October in Colorado. Just last weekend we had record cold temperatures in southern Colorado. Today, we’ll be threatening record high temperatures. The record highs for today are 81 in Colorado Springs, 88 in Pueblo and 75 in Alamosa. All were set in 2003. Judging by how quickly we’ve been warming up this morning, those records will definitely be in jeopardy. By 9:30 a.m., we were already around 70 degrees in many spots. Check it out:

Emjoy the warmth while it’s here…changes are on the way beginning Tuesday!

I harped and harped on it Thursday and Friday. “You’ll either be in it, or out of it, there really isn’t a dividing line”. I was talking about the cold air and the resultant clouds and light precipitation that caused quite a few headaches on the roads for those trying to get around on Saturday in particular. On Sunday as I went into the grocery store at noon, Woodland Park was at 54 degrees with a lot of sunshine and most of the metro areas were in the teens and lower 20s.

We’re still dealing with this today and being that I’m now in the office I can show you some graphics to illustrate this concept of the shallow and dense cold airmasses. Check out the NWN shots from around 230.

 Eads at 230 was still holding on to 39 degrees and still had quite a bit of low cloud cover. Below you see that Canon City had cleared out and made it to 50 degrees, but at the same time the Pueblo airport was only at 44.

Briargate, one of the higher areas in the Colorado Springs metro was running about 6 to 8 degrees warmer than many neighborhoods near downtown. As you look toward Pikes Peak in that shot, the haze at the base of Pikes Peak (sorta looks like a Bob Ross painting!) represents where the deeper cold air was. A reminder that it is lower downtown along Monument and Fountain Creeks than it is in the Briargate neighborhood. This is important because the cold airmass that moved in Friday night is very dense (more air molecules in a given area) than the relatively warmer air over the mountains. Because of gravity, this air acts “heavy” and is most noticable over the lowest areas. Check out the visible satellite imagery from a little after 230. It shows the low clouds associated with the deepest part of this cold airmass hanging out along the Arkansas River Valley (the lowest area in southern Colorado).

The image above right very nicely illustrates how I describe this cold air. As it sloshes up against the foothills, it is a lot like ocean waves crashing on the seashore. It moves up the beach, then back out, then back up and your feet are either wet or not, there really isn’t much of a dividing line. In this metaphor, the water is the cold air and the beach is our local terrain. Many times over the winter months we’ll find that areas in the foothills and over the mountains will end up warmer than some of us at lower elevations. When this happens, you know that a cold and dense airmass from Canada has moved in for a few days!

By the way, many times in these scenarios we know we can not “nail” the temperature forecast, we simply try to make the point. It is next to impossible to pinpoint where the border of the cold airmass will be at any given time and it will move up into the foothills and back down through the course of the day. Many times the difference between being in the cold air and out of it can be 20 degrees or more with a dividing line of less than 1/4mile. In these situations we just hope to send you out the door with an idea of what is happening overhead…

We were tacking some wintry weather this morning and we did it with our three most effective tools–STORMTRACKER 13 Real-Time Travel, STORMTRACKER 13 Live HD Doppler Radar and the Neighborhood Weather Network. The heaviest of the precipitation can be seen below where snow-packed roadways were common in the northern portions of Colorado and into Wyoming.

Folks in Cheyenne had some brutal cold to go along with the snow. Notice that the temperature in Cheyenne was at 10 degrees this morning!

The snow and freezing drizzle caused many problems on the roadways, especially in the northern portions of the state where some roads were closed. In the Colorado Springs metro area, CSPD sent virtually every officer out to cover accidents. Check out all of the red dots below, indicating hazardous and icy roads.

This snapshot of Stratton shows the freezing drizzle we had. I encountered some of it myself on the drive into work.

While northern Colorado had the bulk of the snow, those of us in southern Colorado dealt with freezing drizzle and freezing fog as seen below in Pueblo and Woodland Park.

Not everyone had it bad. Alamosa warmed up quickly this morning with a good deal of sunshine.

Fog developed again tonight, earlier than it did last night. Our weather watcher Carol in Peyton said she had low clouds and fog since 5pm. Visibility will be low across portions of El Paso County through tomorrow morning so be extra cautious if you are driving. Low clouds should clear out a little quicker tomorrow, but the winds will pick up ahead of a cold front bringing cooler temps for Tuesday. We don’t expect you will wake up to fog Tuesday morning.

Low clouds and areas of fog were common sights east of I-25 this morning. As you can see above, Falcon and Briargate were two of the sites across the Neighborhood Weather Network where the fog was most noticeable.
Meanwhile, Woodland Park lived up to its nickname “City Above The Clouds” with a sunny start to the day. Cripple Creek was also mostly sunny early this morning. The lack of low clouds left these two Teller County locations warmer than many sites across the plains to get Sunday started.

We are looking at our first “widespread” freeze of the season tonight! A Freeze Warning is in effect for I-25 and the plains until 9am Friday. Make sure you bring in plants or cover them, bring in pets and drain any exposed pipes. Temperatures will drop to the 20s across the plains and teens for much of the high country! Brrrr!