Snowfall in Colorado set national records this weekend

Although the season has just begun, Denver received about 20 inches of snow last week. And if another strong storm hits before December, it could make history.

“So if the month were to end now – which obviously it isn’t – but now the 20 inches that we have this month, that would actually be the 10th snowiest November in Denver’s history,” said Zach Hiris, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “To get to the first two or three, we still need to get about eight to nine centimeters of snow.”

Southeast Denver received an unusually high amount of snow compared to other areas along the Front Range. And according to Hiris, it was simply because of “the way the winds worked.”

Further south, both Pueblo and Colorado Springs broke snowfall records for the date.

On Friday, November 8, both cities experienced record-breaking snowfall. Nearly 5 inches of snow fell in Pueblo – breaking the previous daily record set in 1890. Similarly, 8 inches of snow fell in the southern Colorado city of Colorado Springs, breaking the previous record of 2.6 inches set in 1975.

Snow is also starting to fall in the mountains to the west, giving a boost to the state’s early snowpack. Cities and agriculture in the Front Range all rely on deep snowpack.

“Across the state, for the most part, we’re doing pretty darn good. “We’re running above average to well above average to start,” Hiris said of the snowpack in the various mountain basins – particularly those south of I-70. “But of course there is still a long way to go before the peak of the snow season.”

At the peak of the storm, more than 75,300 people lost power across the state, most of them in the Denver metropolitan area. According to Xcel’s power outage map, more than 1,000 homes in the Denver metro area were without power as of midday Monday, but none of those outages are related to the storm, according to Michelle Aguayo, a spokeswoman for the utility.

“Everyone whose power was impacted by the storm has been restored,” Aguayo told CPR News.