October 2020 checked most of the weather boxes, with record warmth, persistent drought, a dumping of snow, explosive wildfire growth, a dust storm, freezing drizzle, and historic cold. Here’s a quick and colorful rundown of our weather during October and how it relates to climatology.

Help support our team of Front Range weather bloggers by joining BoulderCAST Premium. We talk Boulder and Denver weather every single day. Sign up now to get access to our daily forecast discussions each morning, complete six-day skiing and hiking forecasts powered by machine learning, first-class access to all our Colorado-centric high-resolution weather graphics, bonus storm updates and much more! Or not, we just appreciate your readership!

Top Weather Highlights of October 2020:

80’S TO START OCTOBER! We began the month of October with weather more akin to August, something that has been par for the course since mid-June.

Boulder hit the 80-degree mark on seven consecutive days which was one shy of an October record.

RELATED POST:
This week in Colorado weather: October 5, 2020

HEAT TURNS TO SNOW & DUST: The warm stretch came abruptly to an end with a strong Pacific cold front blowing through on October 11th. This front produced blowing dust, smoke, strong downslope winds, high fire danger, and even snow in the Mountains.

ANOTHER, CLOSER FIRE: On October 17th, during another period of strong downslope winds, the CalWood Fire ignited in western Boulder County.

Later that evening, Mother Nature delivered a cold front quelling the fire below 7000 feet elevation.

The damage had already been done with dozens of structures lost in the Foothills and nearly 9000 acres burned.

100K ACRES IN ONE DAY? IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? The East Troublesome Fire ignited on October 14th, grew somewhat on the 16th, but absolutely exploded on the 21st as strong westerly winds increased in the Mountains. The fire quickly forced the evacuation of Grand Lake, Granby and eventually Estes Peak as the wildfire jumped across the tundra of the Continental Divide and starting coming down into Rocky Mountain National Park towards Estes.

The fire grew more than 100,000 acres in a single day and became the 2nd largest fire in state history, just behind the still active and growing (at the time) Cameron Peak Fire.

FIRST WINTER WEATHER OF OCTOBER: The first wintry weather of the month wasn’t snow, but instead freezing drizzle on October 22nd. Most areas below 7000 feet elevation saw a light coating of freezing drizzle on this day.

RELATED POST:
Wintry weather returns to the Front Range Thursday evening, more to come this weekend

WIDESPREAD SNOW HELPS WITH THE FIRES: Our first snowfall event in nearly eight weeks occurred on October 25-26 and produced up to 18″ of snow in the active burn zones of Cameron Peak, Calwood, and East Troublesome Fires. Snow also fell across the entire Denver Metro area, heaviest from Boulder to Fort Collins where up to a foot was reported.

The 12.5″ of snow that fell in Boulder is a rarity during La Niña conditions.

RELATED POST:
Storm Recap: Jet-focused storm delivers snowfall and record cold, helps with active wildfires

RECORD OCTOBER COLD: In many ways, the record-shattering cold that accompanied the snow event was just as impressive. Boulder set back-to-back-to-back daily record low temperatures, including the earliest ever single digit temperature and the 2nd coldest ever October temperature reading.

CONGRATS! We announced the winners of our 6th Annual “Second’ Snowfall Contest following the highly-anticipated wallop of snow. How did you do?

RELATED POST:
Congratulations to the winners of the BoulderCAST 2020 "Second" Snowfall Contest!

October 2020 Recap Graphics:

.

Featured image of CalWood Fire by Julian (/u/pacard on Reddit)

Spread the word, share Colorado weather:

We discuss Boulder and Denver weather every single day on BoulderCAST Premium. Sign up today to get access to our daily forecast discussions every morning, complete six-day skiing and hiking forecasts powered by machine learning, access to all our Front Range specific weather models, additional storm updates and much more!

BoulderCAST Team

This post had major contributions from at least two members of our team. The more meteorologists the better, right?

More Posts