Snow Reports for Sunday thru this Morning (and a bit more from me, as usual)
(posted by Keno at 255 pm on May 7)

So while we could see just a bit more snow today at spots high up, I'll go and post the few reports that came in now from our spotters. Like all small snowfalls, many don't report or their locations only saw rain.

First report will be from me at the Crestone Weather Station in Chalet 1, by the Baca firehouse, at 8,085 feet. We saw a mix of snow and rain. But the NWS was not forecasting snow for below 8,500 feet, and I stuck my neck out and did, and in the end, we saw mainly snow - at least at my place, but most of it didn't stick. So in the last 3 days and this morning, we saw water wise, 1.35" of precip! That's a grand amount for our area of course, especially with a drought happening! Snow wise, only 0.9 of an inch accumulated, yet that was about what I forecasted, but I was thinking maybe we would get a bunch more if the temps were just a degree or 2 cooler, but they weren't, or we would had seen at least around 15 inches if they had been. That isn't something we usually say around here, like they say back east a lot, but it is May after all, so this time of year I'll say it! BTW, the rain we did see on May 4, was the first measuable rain of 2025!

Let's look at the spotters reports now. Staying in Chalet 1, my 2 most reliable spotters for years now, both reported in with Paul, living up at 8,560 feet on the highest residential street in town, since Sunday he recorded 1.64" of water in the gauge along with 4.3 inches of snow on the white board. Then closer to where I am, our second spotter on Panorama Way, at 8,200 feet, well, I just realized - that I lost her report, since the only one I can find was when she was reporting that the domain and weather station was down Monday afternoon (it was down into Tuesday - more on that in a bit). So I apologized to her for that, I must have deleted it by mistake, and I'm good at losing things these days. Next, out in the Grants, near Brook Trout road,  west of Wagon Wheel, at 7,800 feet, Jan (another excellent reporting spotter who we have) reported over the period that she collected 0.11" of rain in the gauge and 0.2" of snow, and only a trace of snow on the other days. No question, the lower the elevation and the further out one heads into the semi desert SLValley, we always see less precip!.... and I love reports from there for that reason! Our other spotter from there, who was another great spotter, moved away, so we could always use a new spotter to replace her out there.

Now we head out of town to Moffat, but my grandson Cooper who reports from there, is once again out of town, this time on business, and I guess he won't be spotting anymore for us from Moffat, since he's moving back in here in the next week or so. So now my second grandson has returned back here to the nest to live, and I guess this time I can say that "Coop has returned to the coop!". He's been a spotter for me since he was about 6 or so, as I never had to go out in the pouring rain or snow back then (as he did it for me), and I also taught him how to read a snow rule, etc. But how come I got a feeling he isn't gontta want to go out in the rain for me anymore when he returns?!

Okay, one last report from way up high at 10,800 feet in the wilderness at Colony Lake, from the automatic weather station up there. I've noted in the past that auto stations are notorious for being off in their readings compared to human reporting stations, especially when reporting snow. That's why the NWS doesn't use such stations too much any longer (that and big government budget cuts, that are now even a lot worst off under our king and that other rich nut-guy). So the station up high is now owned by Snoflow..... and I only keep giving these reports since locals down here want to hear them, as I do, but not when I see so much missing info. Once again, like has been the case all of this snow season, there is no daily snow report shown - well, there is, but as usual it's reporting 0.0" for any new snow from yesterday. It's 24hr Snow Forecast is for only 0.1 inch and for the next 120 hours is 2.7 inches. Now the snow pack is reported unchanged from 2 days ago - and that's impossible - when it was showing most of yesterday. It's also showing 18 inches of snowpack up there. Thing is, it was only showing 2.0 inches on May 3, before the snow started, so they are claiming 16 new inches fell in this timeframe since that other reading, when 20 to 35 new inches were forecasted to fall at 13,000 and 14,000 feet. We have no stations that high up and South Colony is almost 4,700 feet lower than our highest mountain peaks up above it. So it should see less snow than higher up there, but that 16 new inches is still off. But again, we know that's missing a day of reporting, too, and that area had to see at least near a foot yesterday. Anyway, the snowpack there is now back up to 46% of normal and that's still very low, indeed.

Okay, one last note. Yes, our weather station, web cams and my entire domain (keno.org) was offline from Monday afternoon until yesterday afternoon. Actually, no, the domain was always up and working. What was offline was all of the Crestone cams and the weather station - because I had no internet service. But no, it wasn't Cello's fault at all, just mine! With my health issue getting in the way again, I did something very stupid and killed both my internet modem and the main modem that places the Crestone web cams online for all to see. I thank Cello for their fast work on getting out here as soon as possible and fixing the internet problem as quickly as they could. Since this happened around the time they were closing for the day, we did have to wait until the next morning to get it all fixed.

But the still ongoing problem is our local cams. Since I co-own them with my good buddy Tommy, we have to fix them ourselfs, and Tommy is a much better tech man than I. In fact, after what I did 2 days ago, I have removed myself from any and all tech work on the cams. Plus, now that Tommy has moved away from Colorado (last fall), and lives in upper Michigan, in the middle of nowhere, on land he and his wife once lived on a light year ago, well, he will have to make a special trip back here to install a new system to get the cams running again, and also deal with the one cam that I was trying to get back online when I messed everything else up. So, until he gets out there, we have no Crestone Cams until that day comes around.

I thank my spotters who reported on this last snow and just in case we see no more snow this season (it was snowing here about 2 hours ago with the temp at 45 degrees!, so maybe we will or won't)... I want to thank all of my many spotters for their reports for the 2024-25 snow season!: Thank you all!! A few of my spotters do report to me year round of course, and I love rain and hail reports, too, but I only report those online when we see a big rainfall. But I do still report the rain totals to the NWS year-round, along with my own reports. Last but not least, I thank you viewers who love to lurk at our weather station and my 5 different webcam sites. While the Colorado Cam site has always been the leader and still is by a wide margin for web page views, the newest site, the World Wide Cam site has exploded in the last year in page views and folks from all over the world look at this site. But then again, that's been the case for all the other cam sites - and all of my other web sites, especially the music ones, on my domain. Yet none of the other sites are proactive any longer, yet folks still visit them, and if your one of those looking at these 1990s old looking sites, well, I thank you for that, too!

New weather icons are now being used on the site's forecast page
(posted by Keno at 620 am on Saturday, May 3)

As you may have noticed, I started to slowly introduce new weather icons in the local 5 day forecast, and as of today, they are now being totally used and have replaced the old ones that had been used for the last 20 plus years. These new icons come from the National Weather Service (NWS) and now show the percentage for any precip in the forecast for each day. When there is less than a ten percent chance for precip, the old icons will still be used.

The NWS actually came out with these new icons over a year ago, but there are just hundreds of them to download into my domain, as just about every combination of weather conditions and every percentage for precip (rounded off to the nearest 10) are included, and that was why I waited so long to use them. There were just too many different combos (or if you prefer, web files) to download. But while it only takes seconds to download any number of files these days, the problem was in trying to decide which ones to choose from and then download and even worst, try to organize them all into new files that I would have to create on the domain. So instead, what I'm doing, is just hot linking the icons from their online locations on the NWS's server, to our forecast page. While that might sound perhaps easy to a non web coder to do, well, it is, but it's very much time consuming with each and every icon used, since I can't just hot link to each image, but I need to recode them so they show up correctly for each time slot and at the correct size I need to use. In turn, this means I have to do this nine times for each icon spot per forecast.

So while this new set up is easy to do, it's very much time consuming. But I am retired from all other work now, other than working on this weather site and also the domain's cam sites, as my other web sites, which all were once proactive, aren't any longer (for the most part). I also no longer can go hiking up in the mountains as I used to do at least twice a week, or even hike around town anymore unless it's downhill. Since I also no longer drive or have a car, I have to rely on my grandsons to take me places (when they have the time). So, I'm home a lot these days and guess what that means? It means I have the time to do this extra work! So I don't really mind the extra work at all, as it's something to do. 

All of the following are issued when hazardous winter weather is occurring, imminent or likely. I'm only noting the warnings we see here and will skip the other winter advisories (like a freezing rain or drizzle advisory) that the National Weather Service (NWS) issues elsewhere, since that kind of weather never really ever occurs in our neck of the woods:

- A Winter Weather Advisory is issued for less serious winter weather conditions than warnings - but will still cause significant inconvenience.
- A Winter Storm Watch is issued when conditions are favorable for significant winter weather and/or blizzard conditions within the next three days, but the timing, intensity, or occurrence may still be uncertain.
- A Winter Storm Warning is issued when a combination of heavy snow, blowing snow, and possibly ice mixed with snow is expected to impact the area. Time to act! If caution is not exercised, such storms could lead to situations that may threaten life or property
- A Blizzard Warning is issued when the combination of strong wind, low visibility, and heavy snow will significantly impact daily life. Plus once again, if caution is not exercised, such storms could lead to situations that may threaten life or property. Blizzard conditions are also met when visibility in falling and blowing snow reaches ¼ mile or less.

- A Snow Squall Warning is an alert from the NWS that indicates a short, intense burst of heavy snowfall that can create dangerous driving conditions
- A Wind Chill Watch is issued when Wind Chill Warning criteria are possible in the next 12 to 36 hours.
- A Wind Chill Warning is issued for wind chills of at least minus 25 degrees on the plains, and minus 35 degrees in the mountains.

Some more on this:

A Blizzard Warning has different criteria's for different areas. For one to be issued in the Rocky Mountains, the conditions noted above apply, but winds must be in excess of 50 mph. This criteria also applies to our Foothills and all higher elevations. For our Mountain Valleys and the Colorado Great Plains, the conditions noted above again apply, but winds don't have to be as high, as speeds of 35 mph or higher at lower elevations is all it takes for a Blizzard Warning to be issued. Plus, while large amounts of snow are usually expected, little or no snow at all can be expected when such a warning is issued, since blowing snow from past storms also can meet criteria for a Blizzard Warning to be issued.

For a Wind Chill Watch or Warning: As the wind increases, the body is cooled at a faster rate. The “wind chill” is a way for meteorologists to communicate what the combination of wind and temperature “feels like” to exposed skin. While wind chills negatively affect our bodies - and our pets bodies, they have no effects on other things like your car. While a vehicle's battery and other engine parts are effected negatively by the cold, they aren't effected by wind chill.

Our area rarely sees Snow Squall Warnings issued here in the winter, as snow squalls are more likely to occur in the spring here, plus they usually don't last all day long around here like they do in the U.S. Great Lakes. But yes, we can still see them in the winter months here, too.