WATCH: Bull’s-eye of Colorado winter storm expected to be in area surrounding Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs and El Paso County are bracing for a storm that could dump nearly a foot of snow.
As of Sunday night, the bull’s-eye of Monday’s storm was expected to be Monument and areas north. But in a rare occurrence, the entire state will feel the storm’s impact.
The National Weather Service has winter weather warnings for nearly all of Colorado’s counties until 11 a.m. Tuesday and cautioned that heavy snow is expected to dump on both sides of the Continental Divide. Monday’s storm could leave 6 to 12 inches of snow on the ground in El Paso County by Tuesday morning. Northern El Paso County could see up to 15 inches.
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Meanwhile, city and county plows hit the slick streets on Sunday night and officials were put on stand-by, ready to respond to what could become a life-threatening storm, said Robin Adair, the county’s community emergency preparedness coordinator.
“The forecast for this storm is for one of the worst we’ve seen thus far this season,” Adair said. “If the forecast comes to fruition, it has the potential to be a life-threatening storm.”
But some decided not to wait until the storm’s full brunt hit. When flakes started flying Sunday, the Salvation Army opened its two shelters – on South Weber and South Sierra Madre streets – at 6 p.m., an hour earlier than usual. The shelters will remain open all day Monday instead of closing at 9 a.m., said Jeane Turner, the shelter’s community relations and special events manager. There is a chance the shelter will adjust its hours again if the storm worsens, Turner added.
By early evening Sunday, school districts around the county announced Monday closures.
As of Sunday night, the big storm was hovering over southern California but tracking to hit somewhere along the New Mexico-Colorado border, said Makoto Moore, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“It’s going to hit western Colorado and bring snow to the western hills and all the higher terrain, the west-facing slopes,” Moore said. “And then as it moves across tomorrow (Monday) afternoon, as the upper system actually moves into Colorado, then things will start ramping up.”
The tricky part has been predicting where the storm will hit hardest, Moore added. On Sunday, at least one weather forecasting model showed the bull’s-eye shifting from Pueblo and El Paso counties to northern El Paso County.
While Colorado Springs will receive a fair amount of snow, wind in the county’s eastern areas could be fierce, said Brian Bledsoe, chief meteorologist with Gazette news partner KKTV.
Bledsoe also was tracking the changing snowfall models and said that at least one was predicting up to 15 inches in southeastern Colorado Springs and out to Falcon.
“But I’ve lived around here long enough to know that the models usually overdo snow for us,” he said.
If the heavy snow doesn’t start by Monday afternoon, Bledsoe expects that Colorado Springs will be in the clear, while the city still could be chilled by icy wind. But, even at its worst, the storm most likely will not come close to the blizzards of record in El Paso County, such as the infamous one in 1997.
“It takes a lot of things working very well together to get a good snowstorm here in Colorado Springs,” Bledsoe said. “With this storm, there are some of those things present and there are some of those things that aren’t.”
Blizzard or not, Monday’s storm is nothing to be caught outside in.
“This is the kind of storm where, if you do not need to go out, you shouldn’t,” Adair said.
A snowstorm didn’t keep Ella Illsley and her dad, Dave Illsley, from delivering Girl Scout cookies in their neighborhood on Sunday, January 31, 2016. Ella is with Troop 2821 and sold 150 boxes this year. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/The Gazett
Girl Scouts didn’t let a little snow stop them from selling cookies on Sunday at the Black Forest Store. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette
Girl Scouts didn’t let a little snow stop them from selling cookies on Sunday at the Black Forest Store. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette
Because of worsening conditions, the doors of the Salvation Army Warming Shelter were opened an hour early for those who would have to spend the night outside. A line of people line up to get into a warm place to spend the night on Sunday, January 31, 2016. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette
Because of worsening conditions, the doors of the Salvation Army Warming Shelter were opened an hour early for those who would have to spend the night outside. A line of people line up to get into a warm place to spend the night on Sunday, January 31, 2016. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette
Because of worsening conditions, the doors of the Salvation Army Warming Shelter were opened an hour early for those who would have to spend the night outside. A line of people line up to get into a warm place to spend the night on Sunday, January 31, 2016. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette