Spring snowstorm targets Colorado, Denver could see up to 9 inches
Colorado faced a May snowstorm that could bury Denver under up to 9 inches and drop 2 feet in the mountains, complicating the Wednesday commute.
A spring storm was set to drop December-like snow on Colorado, with the Denver metro area forecast to collect 2 to 6 inches overnight Tuesday into Wednesday and isolated pockets possibly reaching 9 inches of heavy, wet snow. In the Central Rocky Mountains, totals of 1 to 2 feet were possible, turning a late-season system into a widespread disruption for travel, school schedules, ranching and spring field work.
The National Weather Service in Denver and Boulder said a significant spring snowstorm was developing across the Colorado Front Range, with scattered rain and snow showers at lower elevations expected to change fully to snow by Tuesday evening. Forecasters warned that accumulations overnight into Wednesday morning could hit the morning commute, especially along the I-25 corridor, the Palmer Divide and higher-elevation routes where travel impacts were expected to be significant.
The storm arrived at a moment of unusual vulnerability. Denver was running about 20 inches below average for snowfall this season, and federal forecasters had described the winter as producing record-low snowpack in many Colorado basins. By early May, all of Colorado was in drought status for the first time since December 2021, underscoring how far the state remained from a normal cold-season moisture pattern.
That drought backdrop made the storm more than a weather oddity. Denver Water had already declared a Stage 1 drought on March 25 and asked customers to cut water use by 20 percent, a sign that spring moisture mattered as much for reservoirs and soils as it did for road conditions. A burst of wet snow could offer a temporary boost to the state’s sagging snow totals, but it would not erase the water stress built up over months of dry, hot weather.
The heaviest snow was expected to be especially burdensome because of its weight. The National Weather Service warned that the wet snow could damage tree limbs and power lines, a familiar late-season hazard in neighborhoods from Boulder to Centennial where leafed-out trees are more vulnerable than they are in midwinter. With winter storm warnings in place for parts of Colorado and neighboring Wyoming through Wednesday, officials faced a messy mix of slush, outages and a difficult commute before the storm finally moved on.
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