Weather
An unsettled Colorado pattern starts this weekend, with the best snow from Saturday night through Tuesday evening and 5-15 inches for favored higher terrain. Snow levels will be marginal for some lower bases early, but most high-elevation terrain should see accumulating snow, cooler temperatures, and periodically gusty winds. Arapahoe Basin, Loveland, and Copper are the main open areas in this forecast set, while many other mountains are closed for the season, so the most useful powder opportunities are limited to the remaining open terrain.
Friday stays mostly dry and windy before a colder, cloudier pattern takes over during the weekend. The individual models are converging on light precipitation developing Saturday evening and becoming more organized overnight into Sunday, with the strongest agreement on Sunday through Monday. They also agree on gusty winds around the front and during showers, with many exposed ridges seeing gusts in the 25-35 mph range and locally stronger gusts at times, so open high terrain may feel rough even where snowfall rates are modest.
Confidence is strongest from Saturday evening, April 25 through Tuesday evening, April 28, when the individual models converge on storm timing but still diverge on local intensity. The southern San Juans and some northern mountains look favored, while central resorts generally see lighter but still useful refreshes. Snow-level forecasts are fairly clustered during the steadier snowfall, mostly near 8,000-10,000 feet and lowering in heavier showers. Snow quality should start dense to fair before improving at higher elevations as cooler air deepens, with SLRs mostly running from about 8-13.
The individual models are still converging on late Wednesday through Friday shower chances, but they diverge on intensity and placement enough to keep the next wave in the broad 3-9 inches for favored high terrain. Timing is only loosely aligned, snow-level forecasts cluster in a similar marginal high-elevation band, and winds look less consistently impactful than this weekend. By Sunday and Monday, May 3-4, spread becomes much larger, with one wetter solution and several lighter ones, so additional accumulations look possible but speculative.
Resort Forecast Totals (Sat Apr 25 – Tue Apr 28)
- Wolf Creek – 11-16 in
- Steamboat – 7-10 in
- Crested Butte – 5-8 in
- Telluride – 5-7 in
- Arapahoe Basin – 5-7 in
- Monarch – 4-6 in
- Loveland – 4-6 in
- Snowmass – 3-5 in
- Winter Park – 3-5 in
- Copper Mountain – 3-4 in
- Breckenridge – 2-4 in
- Vail – 2-3 in
- Beaver Creek – 2-3 in
