Weather forecasting in Summit County Colorado must be a tough job

Jan 9, 2008 | 5 Comment

Eighteen years ago we bought our first Summit County ski condo.  We lived in Evergreen at the time, about 60 miles away.  We would look out our window, see what the weather was like and decide to ski based on what it looked like in Evergreen.  Not exactly the best way to do it, as it always seemed to be the exact opposite once we crossed over the Continental Divide.  I remember many a day where we left blue skies in Evergreen and drove into a blizzard in the mountains.  The 14,000 foot peaks have a huge effect on the weather, mostly by stopping the clouds from going past them unless it is a really major storm. 

When you live in Denver you hear the word “upslope” a lot.  That means that the weather is coming from the east, moving across the plains and up the mountains.  When that happens the storm usually gets stuck against the high mountains and cannot move any further east.  As a result it dumps snow on the foothills until it runs out of moisture!  We used to say that the reason they were called “foothills” was because the snow was always measured in feet while Denver measured it in inches.   

Weather coming from the west, as many of our storms have lately, drop snow in the California Sierras, then move over Utah on their way to Colorado.  As the storm moves east it loses moisture, so the snow in the Sierras (known as Sierra cement) can be very heavy and wet.  By the time it gets to us it is Champagne Powder, light and fluffy and fabulous to ski in; the best kind!  Those storms often don’t make it to Denver and are commonly known as “high country” storms.

Here is where I have an issue with Denver TV stations and their weather forecasts.  They seem to think that all the land west of the Continental Divide is the “high country”.  That means that Steamboat, Aspen, Summit County and Telluride are all covered by the one term.  These towns are miles apart (it takes me 6 hours to get to Telluride) and their weather is often very different.  Just this week, while Telluride and Southwest Colorado was getting 2 to 4 feet of snow, we got 6 to 12″ in Summit County.  But all the TV stations could talk about was how bad the roads were and how we were all buried in the high country.  Not so! 

I have two choices for reasonably accurate weather forecasts.  The easiest one if you are here in Frisco or Breckenridge is The Weather Channel.  They have local forecasts every 10 minutes on the 8s.  The second, especially if you are not here in town, is the internet, and I have found www.wunderground.com to be pretty good.  Just enter the zip codes of 80498 for Silverthorne, 80435 for Dillon and Keystone, 80443 for Frisco and Copper Mountain and 80424 for Breckenridge.  It also has radar so you can track the storm.

If you want to know what conditions are like right now rather than in the future, we have the road conditions, including traffic cams and I-70 sign boards, posted on our website at http://www.mountain-living.com/resources/summit-county-travelers/road-conditions/  This time of year the sign boards on the highway are almost always interesting reading if you have nothing better to do!