The largest snowstorm in the Denver area in nearly 20 years brought 27.1 centimeters, reports the National Weather Service in Boulder – with a little more snow expected early in the week.
While temperatures in the Denver area will be in the mid to high 30s Monday and Tuesday Monday, another inch of snow is expected Tuesday night through Wednesday morning.
“Obviously we are not getting close to what we saw this weekend,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Zach Hiris.
It eventually stopped snowing in most of the subway around midnight, with most observers reading between 18 and 24 centimeters, with scattered reports ranging from 24 to 30 centimeters, Hiris said.
The city’s official measuring point at Denver International Airport recorded more snow than the rest of the area, Hiris said in part because it gained a lead on Saturday.
“They actually fared much better in that first wave than most of downtown,” he said.
Although the heavy snow started later than meteorologists initially expected, the blizzard only picked up as soon as it arrived.
“The trend for the storm, even within the first few hours after it started snowing on Saturday, is that it only slowed down, which still pushed back the onset time of the snow,” Hiris said. “That delayed start certainly messed up our initial forecast, but our final amounts were pretty good – slower to start, but also slower to get out of here.”
It ended up being the fourth largest in the history of Denver. Aside from the 2003 storm, which brought in 31.8 inches, the weekend was the city’s largest snowstorm since 1946.
The highest survey in the state because of this storm was southeast of Buckhorn Mountain near Fort Collins, at 42 centimeters, but Hiris stressed that the numbers were still rolling in early Monday.
With the exception of a few days that are expected to come in the 50s this week, the area will see cool days and cold nights in the near future – meaning most snow will not go away any time soon.
“It’s going to be a little slower than normal to get rid of this one … longer than usual for snow in March,” Hiris said, adding that NWS expects it to freeze on some roads and highways.