While one storm exits the Northeast, the next sweeps into Southern California where it’s bringing disruptive rain across low lying areas, heavy snow to the mountains as well as strong, gusty winds. Further east and thunderstorms are causing flight delays in and out of Las Vegas McCarren Intl Airport. In Phoenix and it’s blowing dust along with a hailstorm that’s causing problems.

There’s a lot of energy diving into the base of the trough where the storm is spinning and with very cold air aloft sweeing down, this is enhancing instability and will lower snow levels tonight below pass vele in Southern California. Driving I-5 across the Grapevine or I-15 through Cajon Pass on your way to Vegas for the weekend perhaps, watch out for icing of the roadway as well as heavy, blowing snow with snow perhaps making it down to the desert floor over the 3-4,000ft Mojave Desert. Heavy, thundery downpours are also likely to cause problems through this evening in Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson.

Here’s the latest ECMWF 500mb chart 24 hours out! Note the powerful upper winds racing down the CA coast with the upper low centred over the Four Corners.

Here’s the 500mb for 48 hours, note the powerful upper winds racing from the Pacific across NW Mexico up into the Central Plains, plenty of warm, moist air to fuel heavy rains and thunderstorms over Texas, Oklahoma while back to the west, heavy snows break out across Denver and the Rockies all the way back through the Wasatch and Sierra Nevada.

With the surface low developing and intensifying as it slides south of Denver, wrapping Pacific and even Gulf moisture into and around the circulation as plenty of cold dives down the Rockies, this means a potential 8-14 inch snowstorm for Denver, the biggest of the winter.

The ECMWF surface chart at 48 hours shows deep moisture streaming all the way from Texas to Illinois. Saturday-Sunday looks to see spring-like warmth extend from Texas where 80s return, up through the Mid-Mississippi Valley with 60s making it all the way up through Kansas City and St Louis with any snow lying from recent storms likely to disappear fast.

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Here’s a look at the ECMWF’s total precipitation chart through the next 72 hours. Note the two swaths of deep moisture from Texas and Louisiana all the way to Iowa, Illinois up to Ohio.

Also note the moisture which falls as snow across the mountains of the West with two bullseyes, the deepest over the mountains of Arizona and the other over Colorado west of Denver.

As for snow, check out the GFS through the next 48 hours.

Heaviest snows are seen to fall over the Wasatch and Colorado Rockies with some snow over the Northern Plains too.

As for temperatures, there will be quite the contrast once the low sweeps just south of Denver during Saturday and warmth gets lifted north over the Plains while cold dives down the Rockies.

Here’s tomorrow afternoon’s temperatures. 70s are likely to reach in central Kansas, mid-60s into central Nebraska, while it stays in the mid-30s in NW Kansas, upper 20s in Denver.

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