About 85% of the snow in Denver this winter has fallen on a weekend, and that’s not counting the current storm yet.
DENVER — It hasn’t snowed very often in Denver this winter but when it has, it’s mostly come on a weekend. This will be the sixth weekend with measurable snowfall since the first snow of the season in October.
That’s a lot considering that it’s only snowed on three other days — a Monday twice and a Wednesday once.
Out of the 20.9 inches of snow recorded at Denver International Airport this winter (not counting this weekend just yet), more than a foot (12.7″) of that has fallen on a Saturday. That’s about 61% of our snow.
If you count Friday, Saturday, and Sunday together, almost all of Denver’s snow has fallen exclusively on the weekend this winter at about 85%.
Weather is all about patterns, especially when it comes to the jet stream which dictates the timing of winter storms. Sometimes the waves in the jet stream get uniform or evenly spaced which means a pattern could emerge where a storm could come every seven days or every 14 days.
It happened last winter too, except then we were calling it Wacky Wednesdays. Starting on Dec. 21, 2022, it snowed on four out of five consecutive Wednesdays. Denver finished up the season with 18.8 inches of Wednesday snow which equaled about 39% of the total 48.9 inches.
One major advantage of having all our snow on the weekend this winter is that the morning work and school commute has been relatively undisturbed by winter weather. And two of the three times it did snow during the week were holidays or other days off.
Denver got 0.7 inches of snow on Monday Jan. 8, but most of the school kids were still on winter break. And 1.5 inches fell on Jan. 15, but that was Martin Luther King Jr. Day so most of the kids were out of school and many regular workers were able to stay home, too.
The disadvantage might be for all those grade school kids wishing for a snow day. Not many of those this season, but quite a few schools did skip a day due to the frigid temperatures that came with the polar vortex on Jan. 16.
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