Front Range Snowfall Totals: January 24-26, 2025

January is typically our driest month of the year, but in 2025 it’s been anything but as another round of fluffy snow dumped on the Front Range Friday night into Saturday. We briefly review both the snow totals from this single storm and the seasonal ones.

ur snowfall forecast map issued Friday morning is shown below with storm totals overlaid. Green values indicate our forecast verified, Yellow values mean the observed total was just outside our forecast, while Red was a busted forecast (more than 1″ off). In general, most areas around the Front Range received at least as much snow forecast, if not a tad more. A few places in the higher Foothills actually under-performed, owning mainly to the upslope flow not reaching above 8000 feet elevation most of the day Saturday and cold temperatures producing dense snow (lower ratio).

The booming totals (higher than forecast) were mainly the result of a few jet-forced snow bands which were not well forecast by short-range models, as well as snow ratios being above 20:1 in many areas! Almost every single snowflake that fell on Saturday was a dendrite, the snow crystal that accumulates deep and fast. They sure were pretty as they piled up!

Bouder officially tied the daily snowfall record for January 25th recording 6.5" of snow today, last set in 1996.

The 1.5 mile thick dendritic growth layer overheard all day certainly helped. Nothing but dendrites were falling and piling up today, as seen here! #cowx #boulder pic.twitter.com/upRkWAA8mZ

— BoulderCAST Weather 🏔️❄️ (@BoulderCAST) January 26, 2025

A few cities received more snowfall that we predicted, but overall it was not a terrible forecast:

Boulder officially received 8.9″ of snow from this event, while Denver (DIA) picked up 4.1″. The 6.5″ of snow that fell on the calendar day of January 25th in Boulder tied the daily snowfall record from 1996.