Boulder County's snowiest month of the year has been a washout at the halfway point, and although a few flakes may fall Thursday night, there's pretty much an equal chance of a thunderclap or two.
The past 30-year average March snowfall for Boulder is 16.6 inches, followed closely by February at 14.1 inches.
With the Ides of March at hand, the total this month stands at zero, and conditions have been dry enough that a wildfire broke out Wednesday near the First Flatiron in Boulder.
The weather system passing through Thursday night comes on the heels of unseasonably warm weather that saw daytime temperatures Wednesday climb into the 60s.
"There's a chance of a trace to 3 inches out to the northeast and toward the Nebraska panhandle," Nezette Rydell, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Boulder, said on Wednesday. "Here, it could be rain or it could be snow."
And while the upper-level instability producing Thursday night's conditions will not result in anything resembling a typical summer thunderstorm, Rydell said a "clap of thunder" could come, most likely between about 2 and 4 a.m. Friday.
That's not extremely unusual for March, she said.
"No, we start to see them about this time," she said. "But it's not something common."
Boulder meteorologist Matt Kelsch said the chances for a spot of thunder are better north and east of Boulder County.
Kelsch said Boulder has seen 49.6 inches of snow this winter. The average total through February is 59.5 inches, he said, putting Boulder at 83 percent of its normal total for this point in the year.
"We've certainly seen worse" for snow in a winter, he said in an email.
Bob Henson, Boulder meteorologist and blogger for Weather Underground's Category 6 site, said Boulder County's brown March can be blamed on the second year of a La Niña pattern.
"What we've seen this winter has been very much in line with the La Niña playbook," he said. "Not every La Niña is the same, but one of the most common trends is for light to moderate snows through the winter, as opposed to El Niño, which tends to be a big dump or two in the fall or spring and maybe less snow in the middle of the winter."
Henson said this has not been a particularly strong La Niña — characterized by lower-than-normal sea surface temperatures at the Equatorial Eastern Pacific Ocean, producing a wide-ranging impact on weather in North America. But it has been persistent.
"Another thing going on is it's been very, very dry in the southwest, and especially the southern plains. Often with a La Niña winter, the northern Rockies do better than the southern, and that is exactly as it has been" this season, Henson said. "You can draw a line from Oregon to Wyoming and everything north has been above average and south has been below average."
The current snowpack in the South Platte River basin stands at 81 percent of normal. That's not great, but it's second-highest in the state, and far ahead of the parched southwest corner of Colorado, which has recovered somewhat from a disastrous start to the season but is still only at 49 percent.
There's a chance that the snowpack in northeast Colorado could catch up for the season with a good dump or two. Will that happen?
"The next couple or three weeks have some good news and bad news for Colorado," Henson said. "The good news is there is going to be some transition to more upper-level storminess in the West.
"Typically, that raises our chance of a good Four Corners low. Unfortunately, the pattern for the next few days is going to be featuring the upper-level storminess near the West Coast or just off the West Coast. We're still going to be south of the jet stream for the most part."
The bottom line: "The chances are not great for a hugely snowy spring," Henson said.
Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan
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