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Mother Nature has flipped the calendar to the start of meteorological winter. Alas, one Mountain West city accustomed to snow this time of the year has busted through the record books.

Normally by the first day of December, the Mile High City has tallied at least a foot of snow. This autumn season has been a complete bust—only a trace of snow has been measured on October 15 and in November, trace amounts were noted on the first and second day and 24th. November is even Denver’s fifth snowiest month of the year, just behind February.

A sprawling Mountain West high pressure ridge has deflected the storm track into the Northwest, northern Plains, Upper Mississippi Valley, Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Usually by November, low pressure centers over the southern Rockies and then sweeps northeast into the Great Lakes. This allows occasional winter storms to bombard the Front Range.

Even rainfall has been absent since the start of meteorological fall. The total rainfall since September 1 has only tallied 0.43 inch compared to the average of 2.93 inches. This ranks as the driest autumn season since 1995. Most recently, Denver busted through the record books, recording their latest first measurable snow since records have been kept in 1882. The previous latest measurable snow of at least a tenth of an inch was November 21, 1934.

The dry autumn pattern is only encouraging additional drought development. Moderate to exceptional drought coverage has almost doubled since the end of August. Eighty-eight percent of Colorado is in a moderate to exceptional drought compared to 37-percent just three months ago.

The weather pattern finally offers hope for snow by December 7-10, as a pattern change allows for Pacific storms to enter the West Coast and march across the Mountain West.

In the past three years, Denver had at least 0.1 inch of snowfall by the middle of October. As a matter of fact, last year was a complete flip from this autumn season with the first measurable snow ranking as the second earliest on record on September 8, 2020. In 2019 and 2018, the first measurable snow fell between October 6 and 10.

Stay with WeatherBug as we track the latest winter storms to push across the U.S. Have your WeatherBug active to receive the latest alerts this winter season.
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Sources: NWS Boulder, Colo., and U.S. Drought Monitor
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Story Image: A peripheral view of Denver is seen. (Courtesy of Pixabay.com)

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Denver Busts Through Snowfall Drought Record