After a couple of rounds of snowfall this week and another storm on its way, the ski resorts are celebrating nature’s boost for the terrain and for the excitement.
Sara Lococo, communications manager for Breckenridge and Keystone, said the snow piled up in a way that no one expected — more than 2 feet in Breck — and now, the hype is high.
“Over at Keystone, we were stoked to see about a foot throughout the week. So a really great way to kick off November,” she said Thursday.
Keystone opened last weekend and Breckenridge is set to open tomorrow, Nov. 8.
Lococo called the snow a very welcome sight.
“It certainly gets everybody super excited to ski and ride,” she said.
According to the National Weather Service, that excitement over the snow could get even more … super, especially along the Front Range, from Boulder south to New Mexico, and the Eastern Plains. That area is under a winter storm warning from 5 a.m. tomorrow to noon on Saturday.
“For Friday, we're looking at widespread snow across eastern Colorado, spreading northward through the morning hours. By late morning, we're looking at widespread snow into the Front Range mountains,” said Bernie Meier at the National Weather Service in Boulder.
He said parts of southeastern Colorado could see up to 30 inches of snow during this storm and Interstate 70 toward Kansas might see another 2 feet of snow. The Western Slope is expected to stay dry and part of the far east corner of the state will likely just see rain.
There’s one more push of snow in store in the coming days, said Joel Gratz, meteorologist and founder of OpenSnow, a snow forecasting app. He said tomorrow evening and especially into Saturday, a storm that has been stalled and swirling south of Colorado will start moving.
“As it passes by, it’s going to give a parting shot to the Front Range and a lot of the eastern mountains as well,” he said.
Gratz calls this snowstorm, and any snow, a gift.
“We are generally an arid area, here in the metro Denver area,” he said. “When we get storms, it’s really good for us, we want the moisture.”
For Lococo, who gets to hit the slopes a day early on Thursday as an employee, snow news is good news — and she said it looks more wintry out her window than most opening days.
“I talked to our patrol director this morning, and he was ecstatic about how good the snow is out there right now. Not every opening day looks like this, so this is pretty cool to see,” she said. “It looks more like January right now than early November and I can't wait to get my first turns in out there today.”
And snowfall in the most populous part of Colorado is good for business.
“It certainly helps when it's snowing in the Front Range too,” she said, “Because it just gets, I think, everybody in a winter state of mind.”
Sarah Mulholland and Arlo Pérez Esquivel contributed to this report.
