Why was the ‘official’ snow figure for Denver only 5.7 inches on Thursday?

Samantha Jarpe
·2 min read
2

DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado was hit by a major storm on Thursday, with some areas of the Denver metro reporting over a foot of snow.

However, officially at least, Denver didn’t even come close to that.

According to the National Weather Service, Denver officially saw 5.7 inches of snow on Thursday. This just barely takes the top spot for 24-hour snowfall this 2023-24 snow season, beating out the 5.5 inches seen on Feb. 5.

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This is what was measured at the Denver International Airport, and is thus what Denver “officially” got during the snowstorm. The NWS will use this figure to calculate the total snow and precipitation received this year, among other things.

The reason the NWS uses the Denver airport instead of a more “central” location for its official records is actually because it’s an airport.

The station at DIA is part of a three-agency partnership between the NWS, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense. Essentially, these stations help support aviation operations as well as support meteorological and other research communities.

Additionally, the nature of Thursday’s storm was a major contributor to the lower-than-expected snow totals at Denver’s airport.

According to the Pinpoint Weather team, a weather phenomenon known as upslope or upslope flow was part of this storm.

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Because of this, places at higher elevations were slated to see bigger totals, and indeed did, during the storm.

So because of this, Pinpoint Weather Meteorologist Travis Michels said, not as much upsloping happens where the land becomes more plain-like in the east.

Still, that doesn’t mean Denver hasn’t seen some serious snow totals at DIA. In March 2021, Denver recorded its fourth-largest storm on record. In total, 27.1 inches were recorded at the airport.

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