Weather
Colorado stays mostly warm and windy, with the clearest mountain snow opportunity centered from Tuesday night through Thursday before forecast confidence drops sharply for Sunday through midweek next week. Expect the best odds for meaningful refreshes in northern and central mountains during the midweek wave, where totals generally land in the 5″-11″ zone, while southern mountains are lighter around 0″-4″ and snow quality trends mostly dense-to-fair with brief better pockets at higher elevations.
Tuesday Night-Thursday Storm: guidance is converging on timing and general placement, with snow ramping up Tuesday evening, peaking Wednesday, and tapering Thursday. Intensity agreement is moderate for a northern and central mountain focus, while spread remains higher in the southern mountains where some solutions are nearly dry, and this supports favored totals around 5″-11″ with lighter amounts near 0″-4″ farther south. Snow levels during this wave generally run from about 8,000 to 9,500 feet, occasionally dipping lower in colder bursts, which supports all-snow at most base areas but keeps accumulations more limited at the warmest southern exposures. SLRs are mostly in the 8:1 to 12:1 range (dense to fair quality), with periodic 12:1 to 16:1 pockets on colder, higher Front Range terrain for better quality. Winds are a major ski factor Tuesday into Wednesday, with exposed ridgelines frequently gusting 40 to 60 miles per hour and isolated peaks around 70 miles per hour, then easing Thursday.
Friday-Saturday Lull then Sunday-Monday Wave: guidance converges on a relative lull into Saturday but diverges quickly by Sunday on the next wave’s timing, intensity, snow levels, and wind response. By this point, precipitation coverage ranges from scattered light snow to a more organized mountain period, so confidence is notably lower than the midweek storm and snowfall outcomes widen to roughly 2″-20″ depending on which camp verifies. Most solutions keep snow levels elevated, commonly near 8,500 to 10,000 feet, and SLRs are often around 6:1 to 10:1, so quality would skew denser outside brief colder pockets. Winds look generally lower than the midweek peak but can still bring intermittent lift-impacting gusts around 30 to 50 miles per hour.
Tuesday-Wednesday next week and the broader early-March pattern remain lower-confidence, with guidance still diverging on whether Colorado gets another stronger mountain round or mostly glancing moisture. A practical broad-brush envelope for that later window is around 3″-12″ in many central and northern mountains, with lower totals possible if drier solutions dominate and higher upside if wetter solutions verify. The larger-scale signal still favors above-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation odds for Colorado, which supports periodic mountain snow chances but also continued snow-level volatility and mixed snow quality rather than a locked-in cold powder cycle.
Resort Forecast Totals (Tuesday, February 24 – Thursday, February 26)
- Steamboat – 7″-11″
- Vail – 7″-10″
- Loveland – 6″-9″
- Arapahoe Basin – 6″-9″
- Copper Mountain – 5″-8″
- Winter Park – 5″-7″
- Beaver Creek – 5″-7″
- Breckenridge – 4″-6″
- Crested Butte – 2″-4″
- Snowmass – 2″-3″
- Telluride – 2″
- Monarch – 2″
- Wolf Creek – 0″
