The mother of all logarithmic spirals is focused right over my head. Check it out:
Basically, moisture is being drawn from the Gulf of Mexico and blown to the northwest. There, it climbs the slopes of the Rockies, where it is colliding with a large mass of cold air from the arctic. For Denver, which has been cool and clear all week, this means one thing... Blizzard:
Current forecasts expect an average of an inch a snow an hour, through tomorrow. The snow is already drifting up to a foot high around our house, and gusts of wind (estimated by the NOAA to be as high as 40 mph) have been striking the house, enough to white out the windows and shake the eaves. Schools have been closed; roads are being restricted to emergency use only. If you're in the Metro area, it's a good time to stay inside, and maybe bake some holiday goodies.
Of course, Coloradoans have always taken their holiday blizzards with a bit of good cheer, as you can see in this photo from 1913:
(Note, I said we have good cheer, not good spelling.)
Satellite image via the NOAA; 1913 image of signs in snow piles via the Western History Photos collection at the Denver Public Library; other pictures by the author.
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well its just in time for Christmas. I remember one year, 80? I was
working at Los Alamos, driving to my sisters (Fort Collins), and hit the MOther of all blizards. Got stuck at Walsenburg, took two days to get to the Fort. The weird thing about it was the spotty distribution of snowfall. About 4 feet South Denver, and inch in Boulder, then again 3-4 feet in Cheyene. My friend in Denver didn't celebrate Christmas until after new-years, when it was finally possible to travel across town.
The funniest part, was all the stuck monster pickups on I-25. They plowed one lane, apparently every 4x4 pickup with huge tires tried to drive on I-25 -and all were buried in the unplowed lanes!
Indeed, I believe it was Frederick G. Bonfils (one founder of The Denver Post, as I'm sure you know!) who coined, "'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado." Count your blessings, my friend!
Get out those cross-country skis and enjoy, knowing that you'll probably be sending us a rainy Christmas! Hopefully, Roland will have a white Christmas!
Here in Providence, RI we've only gotten little trace amounts of snow this year, < 2" total accumulation thus far. Rain we've gotten plenty of.
What's interesting is temps have been 5-15F higher, all to do with the jet stream pushing far north into Canada. Today it only got to 43F though but we're expecting 51F tomorrow.
Winters in the northeast have been seriously weird for the past decade. In 1996 we got 120" of snow for the entire season. Since then we're lucky if we get 30".
And rain - enough so that flooding becomes a problem pretty much everywhere.