A cold front swept through Nederland and the surrounding Front Range Foothills communities on Tuesday afternoon bringing a few snow showers and colder temperatures. It is 25 F at 6:30 PM as or this writing and the thermometer is dropping. Look for lows around 15 F by Wednesday morning with highs only around 30 F.
I took a peek at the latest El Nino/ La Nina forecast from the Cimate Prediction Center. It does appear that this La Nina will be weakening somewhat as we head into the spring, and this gives me some hope that we could see a snowstorm or two in March, April, or May. What also caught my attention in this report is the map of precipitation and temperature departments from normal over the past 90 days:
What is interesting is that most of the country has seen either normal or below normal precipitation and warmer than normal temperatures – particularly the north and the east. La Nina winters usually see cold temperatures across the northern states with lots of precipitation in the Pacific Northwest. Granted it is still early in the season, but it goes to show that not every La Nina is the same.
So far, this La Nina is not shaping up to be quite as strong as the 2010-2011 La Nina. Looking at the average 3.4 indice values:
we see that the values for this winter are not as low so far. In 2010-2011 they reached -1.7. This season they are around -1.2 and forecast to weaken. In 2010-2011 we had 114.5 inches of snow. It will be interesting to see where we end up this season.
Here is a forecast product that I have been developing. It is based on the DarkSky forecast API and is written largely in JavaScript and HTML 5. Eventually I will incorporate the live version into this website:
Here is the corresponding National Weather Service forecast:
My goal is to create a tool which will allow you to compare forecasts. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the consensus forecast is often the best forecast.
A chilly weekend is on the way with a little snow possible on Saturday. More about that in my next post…