Will the atmospheric river influence Colorado's incoming snowstorm?
A snowstorm forecast for the weekend in Colorado is going to be a close call.
"We're still trying to figure out exactly what even 36 hours before the first snowflakes fall across Eastern Colorado where that low's going to be," said Greg Heavener, warning coordination meteorologist at the Boulder Office of the National Weather Service.
"A low that will draw moisture into the state is hard to predict. We rely on the Gulf of Mexico to do all the heavy lifting for us with the moisture aspect," said Heavener about big winter storms.
One of the more difficult parts of the weekend storm is figuring out how an atmospheric river event over the West Coast might figure into it.
It has brought heavy moisture to places like California.
But those rivers, which are carried by the jet stream and carry at times as much moisture as 25 Mississippi Rivers, leave their biggest imprint over the mountains far west of Colorado.
"It definitely loses some of its steam, some of its luster, some of the moisture does get wrung out on the West Coast.," said Heavener.
CBS News Colorado chief meteorologist Dave Aguilera says the developing storm will pull from a system in the Gulf and depending on winds, could yank enough moisture to cause a classic upslope storm that could dump on the Front Range.
Such storms give the state an uppercut from the south and east and often carry more moisture.
