Historic November Storm Won't Have Bearing On Entire Winter

BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) - Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder are excited to see the arctic blast that's hitting Colorado.

"By any stretch of the imagination, this is a very impressive piece of cold air that's coming in," said Klaus Wolter, a research scientist with NOAA.

After six weeks of unseasonably mild weather, Wolter says the air that's dropped down from the arctic could be historic for Colorado. It's already broken temperature records, and it could be the longest stretch of sub-freezing temperatures in November in more than half a century.

"It has been really cold on the other side of the globe, in Siberia. We've had this very big increase in snow cover, and really cold air, and some of that has really tapped into," Wolter explained.

Record snow pack in Siberia could be an indication that cold weather will return throughout the winter. But Wolter says there is still a chance that El Niño will strengthen in the Pacific, keeping the cold at bay and bringing moisture to the state.

"We might be in for what I would call a tug-of-war between tropical air masses trying to make it in from the Pacific, dumping a lot of moisture in the mountains, especially the southern mountains. And at the same time the cold air trying to come back in all the time," Wolter said.

Wolter said that winter weather patterns are just setting up right now, so it's too early to predict how they'll settle out over the course of the next few months. But it is an exciting time to be a weather watcher.

"Winter came in like a lion. I've never seen anything like it before. When I sent in the weather report at 4 p.m., it was 51 degrees below what it was the previous day," said CBS4 Weather Watcher Pete Richards.

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Linda Evans has been watching the weather in Colorado for 35 years, and is also a part of the CBS4 Weather Watcher team. She says she's rarely seen anything like the change in conditions that happened on Monday.

"It just suddenly clouded over and by the time I got home it had dropped probably 20 to 30 degrees... just in the time I was gone," Evans told CBS4.

Both, Richards and Evans are tracking the bitter cold temperatures and measuring the snow fall. They're excited to have an early taste of winter. While Wolter says it's too early to know exactly how our winter weather will play out, Evans says she think she knows.

"I'm not a weather person, but based on all the water that we've had this summer, I'm guessing that we're going to get dumped on for now," Evans said.

--Written for CBSDenver.com by Special Projects Producer Libby Smith