Fort Collins missed out on major snow, but Saturday was 'wettest February day on record'
As a storm rolled through Colorado over the weekend, Fort Collins recorded about 1 inch of snow and 1.66 inches of precipitation Saturday.
"That is by far the wettest February day on record — in fact, is more precipitation than any other entire month of February on record, in a single day," said Russ Schumacher, state climatologist and professor in Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science.
The previous wettest February was 1912, with 1.65 inches.
Although the CSU weather station is the official number for Fort Collins, measurements from two volunteer groups, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network and the National Weather Service's SKYWARN program, varied from 0.4 to 2.4 inches of snow across the city over the weekend.
National Weather Service forecaster Chad Gimmestad said every snow measurement is an estimate.
“Even if you walk around your yard, you'll get different numbers usually because of the wind or the way the snow swirls around things,” Gimmestad said. “There is a little bit of an art to measuring snow.”
To get an accurate scientific reading when there’s uneven snowfall in one site, several measurements are taken and then averaged out.
Temperature and elevation also cause variation. “If you had a 500-foot-high hill in the middle of Fort Collins, you would have a lot more snow on top of that hill than on the bottom,” Gimmestad said.
This is evident from the volunteer measurements from the 72 hours preceding the writing of this story Monday. One measured 8.5 inches of snow by Horsetooth Reservoir and another measured 17 inches farther west on Horsetooth Mountain.
Other Colorado snowfall totals
The miles and direction indicate location of reporting sites.
Denver (1 mile northeast): 3.3 inches
Denver International Airport: 5.5 inches
Boulder (National Weather Service office): 9.1 inches
Fort Collins (CSU campus station): 1 inch
Loveland: 5 inches (1 mile north)
Estes Park: 1.2 inches
More: From catastrophe to collaboration: Spring Creek Flood spawns volunteer weather network
A look back at January’s weather
According to a monthly weather summary report prepared by Peter Goble, a climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center, Fort Collins was under the climate normals for snow and precipitation in January:
0.22 inches of precipitation, 54% of the 1991-2020 January normal (0.41 inches)
3.0 inches of snowfall, 45% of the 1991-2020 January normal (6.7 inches)
"At Fort Collins, because we didn’t get much snow, we’re still about 9 inches below average for snowfall accumulation this season," Schumacher said. However, last weekend's storm brought the precipitation "back above average for precipitation for the water year so far."
Fort Collins set a new record for the lowest daily minimum temperature on Jan. 16. The low temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit beat the record of minus 16 degrees from 1917. This was also the coldest temperature recorded on any date since 1996 (tied with Dec. 22, 2022).
This week’s Fort Collins weather forecast
Early this week, high temperatures will hover in the 40s and 50s. Later in the week, California’s storm will feed moisture that will bring cloudy days and mild temperatures to Fort Collins, Gimmestad said.
Although the mountains might start to see some snow on Wednesday, Gimmestad is not expecting much east of the mountains. Another system might bring some light rain or snow showers during the weekend, but forecasts are still being developed.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Here's how much rain, snow Fort Collins got in weekend storm
