waiting for the winter we moved here for! (Denver, Fort Collins: renting, home)

[hopelessinf.c.]

I spent months trying to find the best place for me and my kids. paid attention to all the usual; schools,housing,crime, etc, seasons. still renting and not sure to take the final step because to tell you the truth I am craving winter. Back home has had more of a winter season than here and believe me that is not saying much. wheres the snow we moved here for? The forecast seems to tease snow so much yet still nothing. I dont mean 2-3 inches. I mean snow 1-3 feet at least. Do we stay or do we go????

[nelumbo]

January and February are the least snowy 'winter' months for Fort Collins (as with much of the front range). Spring snows are more common, with the snowiest month being March; there is also more snow in late autumn than in midwinter.

This pdf from CSU has some information on Fort Collins snowfall:
einstein.atmos.colostate.edu/~mcnoldy/tmp/FCL_Climatology.pdf

Multi-foot single event snowfalls do not happen every year.

[Katarina Witt]

This is a more "normal" winter than last year. The record high for most days in Jan/Feb in Denver is in the 70s. It is similar for Ft. Collins. Some winters have prolonged warm, sunny, dry periods.

[delta07]

If you are looking for 1-3 feet of snow, you will probably want to move out of Fort Collins. The front range will experience large dumps of snow, with long periods of very little snow. There is not prolonged periods of large accumulations of snow on the ground. You may want to consider a mountain town if you are craving those large dumps of snow. Consider Steamboat Springs, Gunnison, or Durango for more snow. Otherwise, you may need to look back east along the Great Lakes or in the Sierra Nevada's of California for large snow accumulations.

[ryanek9freak]

HA! move to northeast ohio, in the snowbelt. You'll learn the 3 worst words in the English language: Lake Effect Snow. Trust me, after all that, you'll never want to see snow again.

[qatcat]

Originally Posted by ryanek9freak

HA! move to northeast ohio, in the snowbelt. You'll learn the 3 worst words in the English language: Lake Effect Snow. Trust me, after all that, you'll never want to see snow again.

yeah there or just south or east of Lake Ontario in upstate New York. 2 to 3 feet at a time is commonplace and happens almost every year

[ryanek9freak]

Oh yeah, I know, i've been to Buffalo in Februrary. I got some good pics of the dumping on we just had.
Notice the "No jumping off bridge" sign. People here are actually stupid enough to try jumping off that bridge into the water, cause it's not too high off the surface, and it's really deep underneath, but that deepness is hiding all sorts of metal junk, on which to impale yourself.

[WestCoDude]

Originally Posted by hopelessinf.c.

I spent months trying to find the best place for me and my kids. paid attention to all the usual; schools,housing,crime, etc, seasons. still renting and not sure to take the final step because to tell you the truth I am craving winter. Back home has had more of a winter season than here and believe me that is not saying much. wheres the snow we moved here for? The forecast seems to tease snow so much yet still nothing. I dont mean 2-3 inches. I mean snow 1-3 feet at least. Do we stay or do we go????

If you came to Ft. Collins for 1 to 3 foot snowstorms....well....you're in for a big surprise. While the whole country seems to think that the Front Range is perpetually buried in foot upon foot of snow...it's actually not like that at all. The mountains are what you're looking for. You'll get a whopper or two a year--maybe--but most snowfalls are only a couple of inches.

[jazzlover]

That Colorado is perpetually buried in snow all winter is a long-time fable vigorously encouraged these days by the ski industry. It is true that high mountain areas get a lot of snow, but lower elevation areas of Colorado get much less snow in a year than many locales in the Northeast or Upper Midwest. The snow is also unlikely to stay on the ground as long. The primary color of Colorado's lower elevations in winter is brown, not white. After all, the lower elevation areas just about anywhere in the Rockies are either desert or semi-desert. If you moved to Fort Collins (or any other major city in Colorado) expecting snowy, white winters, you moved to the wrong place. In most Colorado locales, March is the snowiest month--after the late winter and early spring warmup has begun--so what falls then generally doesn't last. Go here and read the averages for yourself:

Weatherbase

[mrkool]

Originally Posted by hopelessinf.c.

I spent months trying to find the best place for me and my kids. paid attention to all the usual; schools,housing,crime, etc, seasons. still renting and not sure to take the final step because to tell you the truth I am craving winter. Back home has had more of a winter season than here and believe me that is not saying much. wheres the snow we moved here for? The forecast seems to tease snow so much yet still nothing. I dont mean 2-3 inches. I mean snow 1-3 feet at least. Do we stay or do we go????

I can't believe that if snow is that important to you, that you moved to Fort Collins. There are lots of places in the U.S. that get more snow than there.