Season's First Chinook (snow storm, warm, recorded, temperatures)

[NickMan7]

For those of you who live on the leeward side of a mountain range, you're quite familiar with this weather phenomenon. This morning was a shock to the system, stepping out of the house at 7:00am to an air temperature of 57º (normal low would be around 30º here in Denver) and winds gusting to around 40mph. It's 10:00am now and 65º.

Wind gusts to 80mph are expected west of Denver today with a gust to 89mph already recorded in Larimer County (NW of Denver).

For those unfamiliar, chinook wind gusts along the Front Range of Colorado blow in excess of 100mph several times per winter, significantly raising the ground temperatures of Denver and its suburbs, both during the day and night. Night temperatures during strong chinooks can stay above 50º even in January, generally immediately adjacent to the foothills. Most, if not all, of the record high temperatures for November through March (which are all between 76º and 85º) can be at least partially attributed to chinook winds.

To my knowledge, it's the first "real" chinook we've experienced this season with numerous additional ones to follow. Other than large snow storms, it's one of the major winter weather highlights in this region.

[Summerz]

I remember them well.
Once upon a time.... I had a paper route, was living in N Colorado Springs just south of the Air Force Academy.

With the Chinooks.... start out the route wearing layers, end up the route in t-shirt and hair a mess!!lol
Not to mention nailing down the news papers.and dodging roof shingles.
But boy the warmth was nice.

[NickMan7]

Originally Posted by Summerz

I remember them well.
Once upon a time.... I had a paper route, was living in N Colorado Springs just south of the Air Force Academy.

With the Chinooks.... start out the route wearing layers, end up the route in t-shirt and hair a mess!!lol
Not to mention nailing down the news papers.and dodging roof shingles.
But boy the warmth was nice.

Haha, a paper route in 70mph winds must've been interesting, needless to say.

I used to live in Superior directly east of Rocky Flats and the winds there were insane! Our apartment balcony faced west and we were on the upper floor, higher than the building rooftops to our west. I had mounted an anemometer on the post of our balcony solely for the purpose of recording chinook gusts. One day in December 2004, I recorded sustained winds of 73mph over a 15 minute period with a gust to 98mph. It ripped a planter box that was nailed into our railing away and hurled it across the greenbelt onto another person's balcony. The sound it made as it blasted the apartment building will never escape my memory.

Another thing that astonishes me about this area is that the wind only topples a couple of trees here and there. Winds of this magnitude in other parts of the country would fell thousands of trees. Shows the resilience and adaptation of the vegetation here.