{"id":16438,"date":"2025-09-22T22:59:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T22:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/falls-arrival-brings-first-snow-conversations-about-winter-season\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:57:13","slug":"falls-arrival-brings-first-snow-conversations-about-winter-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/falls-arrival-brings-first-snow-conversations-about-winter-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall\u2019s arrival brings first snow, conversations about winter season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A view of the first snows on the peaks surrounding Molas Pass on Tuesday morning. (Courtesy of Raja Bradford-Lefebvre)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Autumn has arrived in the high country with trees swapping their summer greenery for the yellow and auburn hues of fall. The days are growing shorter, and a nip of cold hangs in the air. High in the craggy peaks of the La Platas and San Juans, the first snow has started to appear.<\/p>\n

Every day brings winterlike weather a little closer. Raja Bradford-Lefebvre, who grew up in Silverton and was working with her dad Tuesday morning, found a white coating on the highest peaks of the San Juans.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooks like a dusting of snow somewhere around 10,500 feet and up,\u201d Bradford-Lefebvre said. \u201cNot enough to ski just yet, but soon!\u201d<\/p>\n

The first major snowfall is still at least a couple weeks away, said Lucas Boyer, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might see a few flurries,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cBut accumulations are going to be pretty weak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyer said as the Northern Hemisphere transitions from summer to fall, warm temperatures will likely linger. Even if the air is cold enough for snow, the ground will remain warm \u2013 meaning any flakes that fall will likely melt soon after hitting the ground.<\/p>\n

\"Snow
Snow turns the summit of Boulder Mountain white, while the aspens in and around Silverton begin to blaze with fall colors. (Courtesy of Raja Bradford-Lefebvre)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cYou got to get freezing to produce snow, and that\u2019s a little less of a stretch, especially in the mountains,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cAs far as sticking to the ground, it\u2019s going to be pretty much gone as it falls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless, the first snows of the year have arrived. How this modest shift toward colder weather factors into the long-term winter forecast is hard to interpret. Boyer said it\u2019s important to remain patient and take seasonal outlooks with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of winter and seasonal forecasters try to get into the tea leaves,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cTypically, there are some behavioral patterns that happen. But as far as pinning a winter on if an El Ni\u00f1o or La Ni\u00f1a occurs, it is a tight wire that those of us in the daily forecasting business try not to get into too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple long-term forecasts like the Farmer\u2019s Almanac<\/a> and Open Snow<\/a> attempt to predict how a winter will unfold based on indicators like the El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation <\/a>pattern. This pattern indicates whether a winter will be a La Ni\u00f1a or El Ni\u00f1o year \u2013 which affects the location of the jet stream across the northern or southern portion of the hemisphere based on surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and, as a result, which regions are most impacted by winter storms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a 20% chance potentially of La Ni\u00f1a,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cBut yeah, we\u2019ll have to wait and see. It\u2019s just really tricky to pin localized weather on those big oceanic-scale weather patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A graph of snowpack data in the San Juan Mountains \u2013 the headwaters of the San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan rivers \u2013 from the Natural Resource Conservation Service. In 2023 (represented by the purple line) the San Juans saw huge snowfall totals despite being a La Ni\u00f1a year. In 2025 (represented by the black line), also a La Ni\u00f1a year, the region saw lackluster totals. Snowfall winter-by-winter is unpredictable, making long-term forecasts relatively unreliable. (Courtesy of Natural Resource Conservation Service)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Still, Boyer said long-term forecasts can be compared to past winters with similar weather conditions. For instance, the winter of 2022-23 was one of the snowiest in recent memory<\/a>, despite being a La Ni\u00f1a year, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.<\/p>\n

Those conditions typically push the jet stream to the north, often leading to drier winters in the Southwest U.S. However, La Ni\u00f1a years generally bring warmer atmospheric conditions, allowing more water to evaporate off the ocean and fall as snow in the southern mountains \u2013 like what happened in 2022-23.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are consistencies in these weather patterns,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cBut deeper into those you\u2019ll see inconsistencies by each winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyer said that even if measurable snowfall is still weeks away, now is a good time to start thinking about switching to snow tires and breaking out the snow shovels. He also advised travelers using high-elevation passes like Wolf Creek or Red Mountain to begin factoring snow levels into their travel plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re coming off the warm season, and with snow potentially falling on the passes and on the roadways, it\u2019s good to be weather-aware and keep track of those pass level forecasts,\u201d Boyer said. \u201cAs far as shifting to seasonal gear, we\u2019re still in September, but by the time we get into October, that\u2019s when we start seeing some accumulating snow. So it\u2019s a gentle remind to have our ducks in a row. Winter is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

sedmondson@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a good time to start thinking about shovels, snow tires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20203,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16438\/revisions\/20203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16438"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}