John McGinley, Peak to Peak. January 2020: A bad month for snow lovers as we barely topped three inches. Sometimes snow just doesn’t appear in our first month. In 1977 we only had two inches and as recently as 2013 we had only 3.8 inches. This year we were plagued by day after day of low pressure to the east of the Front Range and incessant windy days, 21 days went over 40 mph with gusts near 80 mph on the 6th. This kind of downslope is not conducive to snow production. It was also warm with temperatures above normal. It’s rare in January not to have a day below zero. We only got down to 9F on one day.

Precipitation: Snow totaled 3.1 inches accounting for 0.28 inches of liquid. Normals are 18.1 and 1.07 inches respectively. Most events were snow coming over the divide borne by strong westerly winds.

Temperature:  Temperatures never got too warm or too cold.  We never had a day in the 50s or lows that went near zero. The warmest day was 46F on the 16th. The coldest was 9F also on the 16th. Coldest high was 21F on the 10th. The good news was generally dry roads. The month was two degrees above normal.

Winds:  This January let out all the stops as winds exceeded 40 mph on 21 days, with four of those days over 60 mph. This put the month in the top 10% of windy Januarys. Damaging winds occurred on the 6th with gusts in the area reaching 90 mph. 

Other Features: Persistent westerly flow kept a low pressure trough in the lee of the Front Range. This was the engine for our many windy days. Upslope days were very rare.

Outlook for February: February doesn’t really warm up much with average highs of 36F and lows of 15F. Precipitation is much like January with 18 inches of snow and about one inch of liquid. Ten days are windy with two at 60+mph. Long range models indicate a possible upslope storm on the 4th and again on the 12th. Otherwise we can expect more windy conditions. Long range outlooks show cool and wet conditions in the first half of the month and warmer and drier in the second half.