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Old 11-03-2007, 11:28 AM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
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Quote:
Originally Posted by steveco. View Post
I think last year was the first time Denver had snow on x-mas day in 30 years or so. Sometimes there will be snow left over from a previous snow but even that is rare since the snow around here is usually so quick to melt.
I don't know if it even snowed on Christmas Day! There sure was a lot around, though.
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Old 11-03-2007, 11:49 AM
 
Location: CO
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Quote:
Originally Posted by steveco. View Post
I think last year was the first time Denver had snow on x-mas day in 30 years or so. Sometimes there will be snow left over from a previous snow but even that is rare since the snow around here is usually so quick to melt.
Not quite. According to the National Weather Service, there's been an inch or more of snow on the ground in Denver on Christmas day 15 of the last 30 years (it only actually snowed at all on Christmas Day 4 of those years). Since 1900, on 38 Christmas Days there has been an inch or more of snow on the ground.
Here's a link to a National Weather Service page with the statistics: Denver Christmas Weather Statistics
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Old 11-03-2007, 03:34 PM
 
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B. adams is right. Outside of the mountain areas, the chances of a white Christmas are about 20% in most places. This is due to the weather patterns that normally (and I emphasive "normally") occur during Colorado's winter months. Many of the early (November and December) storm fronts that affect Colorado come out of the Pacific Northwest. The air coming from that way is generally cooler and less able to carry copious moisture, as well as having a longer "fetch" from the Pacific--so these storms tend to be drier. They most heavily affect northwestern Colorado and usually bring little snow to the Front Range. Thus, areas like Steamboat are the most likely to benefit from them.

As winter progresses, more storms develop off of the southern Pacific coast and move inland towards Colorado. These storms bring the big moisture to southwest Colorado. If they move along the Colorado/New Mexico border (they are often referred to as a "Trinidad low" because they often pass right over that city), the can set up a very wet upslope flow for the Front Range--especially from Colorado Springs south. If the moisture collides with cold air from the north, especially if the storm is big enough to fetch moisture from the Gulf of Mexico (and some are) blizzard conditions and very heavy snow can develop along the Front Range and into eastern Colorado. If the low tracks a little farther north the storm can get north of the Palmer Divide and slam Denver and points north pretty hard. These southern Pacific originated storms are not very common until after Christmas, though, and become most frequent into February, March, and April. They are also the storms that usually make or break Colorado's winter snowpack. If they are sparse, a serious water shortage usually follows in the summer.

Until the advent of artificial snowmaking, ski areas quite often were high and dry at Thanksgiving, with little snow for Christmas, either. In the very dry winter of 1976-77, before widespread snowmaking, a number of ski areas had barely any skiable terrain at Christmas--and a couple went bankrupt that season. I was up around Crested Butte a few times that winter. They were filming what turned out to be an abysmal "B" movie about the abominable snowman. There was so little snow, that they had to haul snow into some locations in dump trucks, just to make the scene look plausible. It didn't help the movie--it still sucked.
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