Southwest Colorado\u2019s five major mountain passes were icy and snowpacked Friday afternoon. But all five remained open as of 4:15 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Pacific storm favored the southern and central Colorado mountains, said Dave Byers, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n
\u201cDurango looks like a 70% chance of getting 6 inches or more of snow by the end of tonight (Friday),\u201d Byers said.<\/p>\n
He expected a half inch to three-quarters of an inch of moisture from the storm, which is up from the one-tenth to two-tenths of an inch that was predicted earlier this week. Meanwhile, the mountains could receive 1 to 2 feet of snow from the storm, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last few days, it has really picked up,\u201d Byers said. \u201cThe southern mountains are catching the brunt of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The snowy weather didn\u2019t stop Liz Ferrill and her family from stopping by Cream Bean Berry for a Unicorn Sundae.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought it might be a festive way to celebrate,\u201d said Ferrill, who was visiting from Snowmass, where the first snow occurred in September.<\/p>\n
For others, the snow provided the impetus they needed to swap out tires or purchase new snow tires. Andre Payne, a sales person at J\/P Tire in Durango, said the phone began ringing shortly after 9 a.m. with people wanting to switch to snow tires.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been pretty busy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It is not unusual for drivers to wait until they see the first snow and then want to swap out tires. The tire shop began advising customers to switch to snow tires about three weeks ago. Some people take the advice, other choose to wait.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can always tell people what to do, but if you\u2019re not ready for it then you have to suffer the consequences of waiting two hours or maybe getting in an accident,\u201d Payne said.<\/p>\n Byers said Friday\u2019s storm was the result of a southwest flow pulling moisture from Southern California, Arizona and the Gulf of California.<\/p>\n As the moisture-laden atmosphere hits the San Juan Mountains, it wrings out the moisture, he said.<\/p>\n Temperatures are expected to cool off as the storm makes its way out of the region this weekend. The highs this weekend will be in the upper 30s, and the lows could dip into the single digits, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s still a northerly flow that is pulling cold air down out of Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Byers characterized Friday\u2019s storm as a \u201cshoulder storm\u201d between summer and winter, but he said it is a sure sign that a regular track is settling in for Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re expecting regular storms \u2026 from now on, more into that winter pattern,\u201d Byers said.<\/p>\n Residents can expect mostly clear conditions through Wednesday, with clouds moving in the following day ahead of another storm that looks \u201cvery similar\u201d to Friday\u2019s storm, Byers said.<\/p>\n shane@durangoherald.com<\/a>; mhollinshead@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Forecasters say storm could dump 6 inches in Durango area<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[314,950,28,1164,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-downtown-durango","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-snow","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30484","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=30484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81097,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30484\/revisions\/81097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30484"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}