DENVER — Is this mid-February cold snap really the last one of the winter? And how is Colorado’s snowpack looking after several feet have fallen in recent weeks?
Denver7 Chief Meteorologist Lisa Hidalgo and Colorado Public Matters Senior Host Ryan Warner answer those questions and more as the two held their monthly climate conversation on the heels of a third arctic blast that plummeted temperatures statewide.
A big warmup after bitter cold
Some parts of Colorado were poised for a 50-degree swing in temperatures after the arctic air moves out. Warner asked: How do you explain that?
“One word – Colorado. It's just Colorado, right?” Hidalgo said. “We jokingly say, wait five minutes and it's going to change. [...] I think this will likely be the last really cold snap we see. We will obviously still drop over the next couple of months, with March being our snowiest, but this was another one that was pretty brutal.”
The mid-February cold set a new daily record low Wednesday, when DIA hit -7 degrees. It was the result of a huge arctic cold air mass sinking in from the North Pole and taking over a good portion of the country. Much of Colorado was on the western edge of that air mass, with wind chills plunging to -30 degrees on the plains.
How is Colorado’s snowpack looking?
It’s the perennial question for winter: Has the recent snowfall improved the state of Colorado’s snowpack?
“At this point, it’s a lot better than what we saw just a month ago,” Hidalgo said. “In fact, this past weekend, we were measuring feet of snow within about a week period. I think Vail came in at five feet within just about a week. That's a full Lisa of snow up at Vail.”
Those several rounds of snow brought snowpack numbers up at a few of Colorado’s basins, particularly in the southwest, she said, with the statewide number sitting at 92% when the conversation was recorded Thursday, with several of our basins seeing another uptick with the snowfall Thursday into Friday.
- Lisa and Ryan also discussed the longterm forecast. Watch their full conversation in the video player below:
The federal landscape and forecasting
Warner spoke of the weather computers at the Denver7 studios, where the February conversation was recorded, that Hidalgo and the Denver7 weather team use to gather weather data and create maps.
He asked: With the federal workforce shrinking, how much federal data do meteorologists rely on to feed those computers and tell viewers what's going on?
“Every day we look at data that is coming in from NOAA, from the federal agency, and it's important data,” Hidalgo said. “There's obviously different information being fed through these models, but all of it comes together to really help us with the forecast day to day. I don't know what we would do without those models.”
The importance of telling the climate story
Lisa and Ryan’s conversation also touched on the intersection of climate reporting and meteorology – a point of passion for Lisa’s predecessor at Denver7, Mike Nelson, who retired in December.
Hidalgo said things have changed in the last 20 years. Climate change was a topic that once received a lot of pushback from viewers and TV industry professionals, she said – but it’s a different scene now.
“I think it's changed a lot,” she said. “And in fact, I would say I get more comments from viewers that they want to hear more about these climate change stories than vice versa.”
Climate change, Hidalgo said, has a significant impact on Colorado’s natural disasters like the Marshall Fire, which has changed the way many homes are being built in our state as well as costs like hazard insurance.
Watch the full conversation in the video player above.
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