{"id":42444,"date":"2022-02-01T00:03:49","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T07:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/winter-weather-returning-to-cortez-san-juan-mountains\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:07:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:07:30","slug":"winter-weather-returning-to-cortez-san-juan-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/winter-weather-returning-to-cortez-san-juan-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter weather returning to Cortez, San Juan Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=9db5886a-69e7-550e-9fb8-7f4c4c24730c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1054\" alt=\"A resident who lives near Purgatory Resort digs out of 24 inches of snow Friday after a snow storm moved through the area. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A resident who lives near Purgatory Resort digs out of 24 inches of snow Friday after a snow storm moved through the area. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>After roughly a month without significant snow, winter weather will return this week to Montezuma and La Plata counties and the San Juan Mountains.<\/p>\n<p>Snow is expected beginning Tuesday night stretching through Wednesday evening, with a few inches in some places and nearly 2 feet in others. Freezing temperatures will follow the snowfall in the latter half of the week.<\/p>\n<p>A winter storm watch is in effect for the U.S. Highway 160 corridor, from Cortez to Pagosa Springs from 12:01 a.m. through 9 p.m. Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bulk of precipitation is going to occur Tuesday night and early Wednesday as the system lifts across the area,\u201d said Megan Stackhouse, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction. \u201cIt\u2019s going sit there for a little bit on Wednesday morning before finally pushing out later on in the day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the Cortez and Durango areas will receive a few inches, other parts of Southwest Colorado will see more significant snow.<\/p>\n<p>Forecasts show 8 to 12 inches of snow falling on the southwest San Juan Mountains, which includes Silverton and Rico.<\/p>\n<p>The Pagosa Springs area is looking at 4 to 8 inches, and about 20 inches of snow could fall on Wolf Creek Pass, Stackhouse said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re really expecting the peak amounts to occur in the southwest San Juan Mountains,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cThey\u2019re really in that favored (forecast) pattern, so we\u2019re expecting to get some good snow there.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/R8ttIzv47P38M4gtICu_7NkV5-4.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\/R8ttIzv47P38M4gtICu_7NkV5-4.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cortez weather update.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\/R8ttIzv47P38M4gtICu_7NkV5-4.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cortez weather update.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In other parts of Southwest Colorado, forecasts show little accumulation with 1 to 3 inches in Cortez and Dolores, according to the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n<p>Temperatures will start to dip Tuesday and remain cold through the end of the workweek as the storm moves through and brings a cold front with it.<\/p>\n<p>Lows in the upper teens and low 20s on Monday and Tuesday will be replaced by single digits, including a low of 8 degrees in Cortez on Thursday night, the weather service said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs the system comes in, it\u2019s looking to drop into highs in the 20s,\u201d Stackhouse said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c (The storm) is being influenced by stuff going on in Canada, so we\u2019re getting a lot of good Arctic air coming in,\u201d Stackhouse said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the forecast for Durango, temperatures will start to rebound on Friday, but that rebound will be determined by how much snow falls on Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c (We) could be looking at staying in the 20s for several days,\u201d Stackhouse said. \u201cWe will have to see what happens with the snow, because that\u2019ll be a big drive on the temperatures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-86e156458b089a70e550dda14ef305e2\"><a href=\"mailto:ahannon@durangoherald.com\">ahannon@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>freezing temperatures to start Tuesday night<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[731,950,28,1235,310,497,327,1164,414,88,373],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-ignacio","tag-pagosa-springs","tag-rico","tag-silverton","tag-snow","tag-weather","tag-weather-news","tag-wolf-creek-pass"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42444","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=42444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85340,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42444\/revisions\/85340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42444"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}