Saturday, April 18, 2009

Denver April 17th Snow Storm

Surprise, surprise, it snowed! It figures that we would have warm, dry weather all winter and a cold, wet spring. Funny how that works. Over the course of the day, I received about 8" of heavy, wet snow at my apartment (not an official measurement as I can't find my meter stick), with a short period of moderate rain and also some sleet. I also saw some of the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen. I called them dendrites, but in reality they were more like giant aggregate clumps of smaller crystal types. Looking closely at them (wish I would have taken a picture), they appeared be composed of several very small grauple caught in a web of more dendritic looking flakes. Anyway, it was an interesting day for sure.

The two closest observers to me reported 9" and 8.2" inches, so I'm happy with my 8" estimate.

Up in the mountains west of the city, some places saw almost 50" of snow!!!


Map from the local

A few photos that I captured:












Dann.
Currently: 37ºF, light snow.

4 comments:

p said...

Well done! :)

Pat Boomer said...

Sweet!
I love spring snow, especially the mega-flakes. That 2nd pic made me look twice, at first I thought it was a downspout spewing meltage :)
Was watching the Denver channels and TWN last night, looked like fun!
Crazy stuff up in the mountains.

Anonymous said...

Yeah that storm was quite a big one. we got 7 and a half inches in Rock Springs on the 16th which brought well needed moisture to the area.

Alan

Dann Cianca said...

Thanks, Paul!

Boomer! I thought I was up in Alberta for a while. Saw some flashes on the lightning data up there yesterday. Anything cool?

Alan: Awesome, you'll be glad to have that moisture come storm season!