Wintry weather may be on the way

Wintry weather may be on the way

Dec. 7, 2000

By Jim Mimiaga
Journal Staff Writer

Four Corners weather patterns are expected to take a more wintry turn beginning this weekend, according to the National Weather Service.

Storms originating in the Arctic Circle and Canada should hit this area by late Saturday, with snow piling up in the mountains until Thursday or Friday of next week, said Doug Baugh, weather specialist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.

Two to five inches of snow is expected to fall during a 12-hour period beginning Saturday evening.

"It looks like a deepening storm system over the northern mountains will be dropping into the San Juans in southern Colorado," Baugh said.

"We’re moving into the winter storm-track pattern, and expect sub-zero temperatures after it all clears out."

Almost spring-like highs during the last few weeks are the result of a high-pressure zone holding over the Southwest.

But that high pressure should start to beak down as huge arctic storms spill over from Canada on the west side of the Continental Divide and then track south and east with the jet stream.

"Right now the East is getting most of the snow from the Arctic, but those systems are so large they are spilling over west of the divide, a good sign for Colorado," Baugh said. "It is coming our way."

A phenomenon called a backward low-pressure zone also appears to be forming east of here, potentially bringing additional moisture.

The event occurs when an arching high-pressure system causes an adjacent low-pressure zone to spin off the jet stream against its typical west-to-east direction.

In this case, the now more eastern low would shift and spin directly over the Four Corners, bringing with it snow.

Long-range models for the region, however, show higher-than-normal temperatures for the American Southwest up to the Four Corners border, "so there looks like some warmer-than-normal temperatures may reach up into your area," he said.

The last two weeks have been unseasonably warm and dry, with daytime highs at times reaching the mid-40’s under cloudless skies, reports local meteorologist Jim Andrus. On Nov. 30 temperatures spiked at 59 degrees in Cortez.

So far this winter, Cortez has seen a paltry 7 inches of snow, which came mostly during a single storm in November.

For the near future, though, some of the snow needed by local ski areas and for filling local reservoirs in the spring appears to be on the way.