{"id":48656,"date":"2021-02-11T15:31:42","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T22:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/one-two-three-storm-punch-for-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2021-02-11T22:31:42","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T22:31:42","slug":"one-two-three-storm-punch-for-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/one-two-three-storm-punch-for-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"One, two, three storm punch for Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The San Juan Mountains and lower elevations around Durango are expected to benefit from a series of three winter storms moving through the region during the next few days.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Get ready for some snow in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

A series of winter storms over the next few days are expected to bring much needed moisture to the region, said Mike Charnick, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a favorable storm path for us,\u201d Charnick said.<\/p>\n

The storms are expected to arrive in three waves.<\/p>\n

The first, Charnick said, should hit the region after midnight Thursday and last until Friday afternoon\/early evening.<\/p>\n

During this time, the high country of the San Juan Mountains may receive 4 to 6 inches of new snow. Lower in Durango, however, only a half-inch or inch is expected to accumulate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be a good recharge for the mountains and some of the ski areas,\u201d Charnick said.<\/p>\n

Then, a second, larger storm is expected to arrive Saturday afternoon, with the heaviest periods of snowfall expected after midnight Saturday into Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one is certainly going to bring quite a bit more (moisture),\u201d Charnick said.<\/p>\n

In higher elevations, at least a foot of new snow is forecast, Charnick said. In Durango, the amount of snow is going to depend on how cool temperatures get, but generally, the area could see 3 to 6 inches of snow.<\/p>\n

The third wave, Charnick said, remains more uncertain. Forecasting models show another storm arriving around Tuesday afternoon, but it\u2019s too far out to say how much snow will fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not sure exactly how it will evolve,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of variability.\u201d<\/p>\n

When all is said and done, however, Charnick said the high country of the San Juan Mountains could receive a couple of feet of new snow, which is much needed for the region lagging behind average snowpack levels.<\/p>\n

According to federal data, as of Thursday, Southwest Colorado \u2013 which includes the Animas, Dolores, San Juan and San Miguel river basins \u2013 is at 80% of normal, historic averages for this time of year.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Drought Monitor, too, lists the region in either \u201cextreme\u201d or \u201cexceptional\u201d drought \u2013 the center\u2019s top two highest categories of drought.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the Animas River has been setting record-low flows this winter. On Monday, for instance, the river dropped below 100 cubic feet per second, a rare occurrence based on 110 years of record keeping.<\/p>\n

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

systems expected to boost snowpack in San Juan Mountains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[402,28,1164,295,414,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-drought","tag-headlines","tag-snow","tag-water","tag-weather","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48656","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=48656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48656"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}