After a pleasant days-long stretch of warm weather often eclipsing the 70-degree mark, northern Colorado and metro Denver will see quite a change in conditions starting Friday night.
Instead of breaking records for heat, temperatures will drop substantially and snow will begin falling in the far northern mountains tonight, spreading southward into the Interstate 70 mountain corridor and Summit County by late Saturday afternoon.
By late Saturday night, the National Weather Service predicts areas of snow to develop along the Interstate 25 corridor and along the adjoining eastern plains, with travel impacts continuing into Sunday morning. Some of those areas of snow could start out as rain earlier Saturday evening before turning to snow.
Just how severe those travel impacts will be in metro Denver are still in question.
“There is considerable uncertainty with regard to the amount of snow, since we anticipate bands of snow,” according to a weather service bulletin issued Friday afternoon for the metro area. “Thus, some areas may receive very little or no snow, while others get a few inches.”
Higher amounts of snow are assured for some of Colorado’s northern mountains, with the National Weather Service forecasting around 10 inches for Winter Park, 5 inches for Breckenridge and half a foot of the white stuff for Keystone. The predicted weekend snowfall for some of Colorado’s snow-starved ski resorts will come as welcome news to an industry that has seen a decidedly dry start to the season.
After a record-setting 70-degree Christmas in Denver on Thursday, several communities in the metro area announced Friday that they will open their cold weather shelter networks starting late Saturday.
Meteorologists are calling for a low of 20 degrees Saturday night, a low of 14 degrees Sunday night and a low of 21 degrees Monday night in the metro area. But by Tuesday and towards New Year’s Day, temperatures will top out in the 40s and 50s with little precipitation expected.
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