{"id":29863,"date":"2024-01-07T00:44:59","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T07:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/forecast-says-winter-storm-to-hit-sw-colorado-with-up-to-a-foot-of-snow\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:05:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:05:49","slug":"forecast-says-winter-storm-to-hit-sw-colorado-with-up-to-a-foot-of-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/forecast-says-winter-storm-to-hit-sw-colorado-with-up-to-a-foot-of-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Forecast says winter storm to hit SW Colorado with up to a foot of snow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=e60ac6d4-ed73-5a64-994f-04d364899d14&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1283\" alt=\"Horses graze through the snow covered grass on Thursday and now can expect to dig a little deeper as heavy snow is predicted for the area through Monday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Horses graze through the snow covered grass on Thursday and now can expect to dig a little deeper as heavy snow is predicted for the area through Monday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A significant winter storm moving into Southwest Colorado on Saturday evening is expected to dump up to a foot of snow by Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The National Weather Service released a winter storm warning that forecasts between 8 and 12 inches of snow in Southwest Colorado from Pagosa Springs to Southeast Utah, including the towns and cities of Cortez, Durango, Bayfield and Ignacio.<\/p>\n<p>The warning is in effect from 11 p.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. Monday. It says patchy, blowing snow could make travel very difficult.<\/p>\n<p>National Weather Service Meteorologist Brianna Bealo, who works in the Grand Junction office, said the storm has a huge footprint and stands to impact the whole country.<\/p>\n<p>The storm formed in a great area of low pressure in the Gulf of Alaska, moved into the Pacific Northwest and has been dropping southeast. As it passes the San Juans Mountains, it\u2019s expected to swing into the plains and continue northeast toward New York, she said.<\/p>\n<p>The Southern San Juan Mountains and valleys south of the I-17 corridor stand to receive the most snow from the weather event. She said the storm will also reach areas as far north as Grand Junction, which could receive between 1 and 4 inches of snow in the lower elevations and 6 to 8 inches higher up.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/a7b1C1s4pcU-wXUMzUbLm9Zuq3I.pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:500px;border:1px solid #ddd\" loading=\"lazy\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/a7b1C1s4pcU-wXUMzUbLm9Zuq3I.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Snow forecast Jan 6 238 PM.pdf (Download PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"naviga-pdf-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/a7b1C1s4pcU-wXUMzUbLm9Zuq3I.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Snow forecast Jan 6 238 PM.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s warnings out for the Southeast Utah mountains, for the Uncompahgre Plateau, for the Grand Mesa,\u201d she said. \u201cSo a substantial portion of Eastern Utah and Western Colorado are going to be impacted by the storm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo this storm is going to impact the entire country pretty much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The immediate winter storm is just the first in a series of three storms forecast to move through Southwest Colorado in the coming days.<\/p>\n<p>Bealo said the storm starting its sweep over Montezuma County on Saturday evening will be over upstate New York on Wednesday. By that time, a new winter storm system will have reached Southwest Colorado, following the same path as the first storm.<\/p>\n<p>Two to 4 inches of snow was forecast for Montezuma County on Saturday night, with 4 to 8 inches on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile my family in upstate New York is getting dumped on by today\u2019s storm on Wednesday, we\u2019ll be seeing the next storm out here,\u201d she said. \u201cLooking even further out, there\u2019s yet another one lining up, potentially, for next weekend. So we\u2019ve definitely moved into a much more unsettled pattern with the new year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Temperatures are forecast to remain low through the new week, reaching lows of 20 degrees and 14 degrees Saturday and Sunday night with highs of 27 degrees and 26 degrees Sunday and Monday, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s good news for skiers and snowboarders because the low temperatures will preserve accumulated snow, she said.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-b8f4d9079825fc6720adaf3268814523\"><a href=\"mailto:cburney@durangoherald.com\">cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>two more weather systems expected later in week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1164,414,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-snow","tag-weather","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863","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=29863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80892,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863\/revisions\/80892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29863"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}