Six more weeks of, um, winter?
“This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.” - Bill Murray, “Groundhog Day.”
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today in a depressing little burg in western Pennsylvania (I lived in Pennsylvania for 15 years and I can say that description is accurate for that part of the state.)
As the legend goes, that means we can expect six more weeks of winter.
Of course, what can this groundhog know about Colorado weather? Fortunately, the Denver Zoo has its own forecaster, a prairie dog named Digger that came out of his burrow last week and saw his shadow.
That’s good news for skiers, because here in Colorado, many of us are still waiting for winter to start. So let’s hope the large squirrels are right.
How bad has it been for the central mountains, where most of us Front Rangers ski? 75 percent of average for the year in the upper Colorado River Basin, 88 percent in the upper Arkansas basin. I’ll have a story in Thursday’s Out There about how the El Nino weather pattern, which is shifting the storms to the south, is also shifting skiers south, to Wolf Creek Ski Area, which currently has the deepest base in the Rockies.
The upper Rio Grande basin is 108 percent, and, of course, the SNOTEL monitoring site with the most snow? Wolf Creek Pass.
