There’s no way around it. If you’re a fan of the cooler season, this October has not been kind to you so far!

We briefly discussed a possible pattern change around the 18th in one of our posts earlier this month — and like clockwork, looking upstream is at least going to try to pay potential dividends.

Breaking down the large scale pattern: for now, we stay under the influence of high pressure, keeping things dry and warm for most of this week. By Friday and Saturday, we will start to see changes to our weather.

A strong push from the pacific jet stream will crash onshore of the northwest US, bringing cold air to most of the western states. Models are a bit back and forth on how much (if at all) that energy is able to spin up a low pressure system in the Rockies. If you’ve been weather model watching, you’ll know the global models (GFS, GEM, and EURO) have been printing out everything from heavy rain, heavy snow, our coldest air so far this season, to at times not much of anything at all, and everything in between that.

We’re still quite a ways out but we’re attempting to get a clearer image of what might play out later this week.

The most important aspect will be the placement of the potential trough.

The three images above are possible outcomes of this trough Friday into Saturday. The GFS (American), GEM (Canadian) and EURO (European) all show a big “bowling ball” type trough that spins itself out between Arizona, California and Nevada… never quite getting the worst of the system into our backyards in Colorado.

The data above is just one sample from each of those models.

We’ve talked about ensemble modeling before, which takes an average of a data set from these models. The latest from the Euro’s ensemble members shows the center of troughing further north towards the four corners. That indicates that there still is some background data skewing the average further north.

Regardless… the data are going to see big shifts this week as the models try to pin down an end product.

Now, let’s say the ensemble has a good idea on the track of this storm… what is it printing out in terms of snow/cold potential? Well, for a first potential snow, it’s not too shabby. At this range, this seems like a storm that would slow down mountain travel for sure… and potentially lead to a coating of snow for the front range. Some rough estimates on timing would put this storm in our area some time between Friday evening and through the day Saturday.

The GEFS is particularly bullish:

The Euro is less so, and perhaps a bit more in line with its deterministic as of today – showing about a 30 to 40% chance of 1″ of snow in Denver this weekend, which isn’t epic, but would count for the first snow event of the season if we could pull it off!

We shall see! Friday is Denver’s average first snowfall, so if we can pull it off it’d be right on time!

As for those low temperatures this weekend, depending on strength/placement of the low, frost/freeze potential will need to be monitored. Above is the “most likely* scenario as of now for coldest temperatures by Saturday morning. Plenty of 10s and 20s in the mountains, with 20s and 30s along the front range by Saturday morning.

So, quite a bit to figure out still, but at least the weather is trying to be interesting… We’ll continue to update throughout the week as this storm approaches the region! Subscribe to the e-mail list to get the next article as soon as it comes out!

Colorado defensive back Shilo Sanders returned to action on Saturday after missing the Buffaloes’ three previous games because of an arm injury. While he managed to record seven tackles in his team’s 31-28 loss to Kansas State, his father and head coach, Deion Sanders, was less than pleased with his effort.

With his team’s comeback effort falling just short, emotions may have been running a bit high during his postgame news conference as he went on to call Shilo’s performance against the Wildcats “horrible.”

“I thought he played horrible,” Sanders explained. “I thought he was rusty. I thought he didn’t have his footing. I thought he wasn’t breaking down. He was coming up trying to make the play but open field, one-on-one tackle, with that kind of back, that ain’t an easy task. But, he’s gonna do better. I know what he has in him.”

Deion’s note about Shilo not having his footing was certainly accurate.

READ: One Thing Is Certain, Deion Sanders Has Brought Joy To Colorado Football Fans, And You Have To Respect That

Kansas State running back DJ Giddens got the best of Shilo in a one-on-one situation during the game that left the Colorado defensive back in need of some new ankles. Shilo struggled on multiple occasions to bring Kansas State players to the turf when he did manage to get a hand on them.

Giddens was a problem for the entire Colorado defense as he rushed for 182 yards on 25 carries during his team’s win on the road.

A win over a Top 20 Kansas State team would have been a monumental one for Deion and the Buffaloes on Saturday with an incredibly favorable schedule ahead of them. Instead, Colorado is 4-2 and is one of four other Big 12 teams sitting at 2-1 in the conference.

Denver, Colo., Oct 13, 2024 / 07:00 am

The state of Colorado is home to 54 “14ers” — mountain peaks that are at least 14,000 feet above sea level. The difficulty of these summits ranges from easy to what many would consider dangerous. Many Coloradoans have completed at least one 14er, but Father John Nepil, the vice rector and a professor of theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in the Archdiocese of Denver, is one of the few who can say he has summited all 54 peaks — not once but twice.

Nepil hiked his first 14er when he was in seventh grade and hated it. However, soon after, “something awoke in me and I fell in love, and I’ve been climbing them ever since,” he told CNA in an interview.

When Nepil was in his 20s he completed all 54 14ers for the first time. Last year, on the feast of the Guardian Angels, atop Mount of the Holy Cross, he completed the 54 for a second time — this time as a priest and with the celebration of Mass at the top of each peak.

The first Mass he celebrated at the top of a 14er was a week after his ordination in May 2011. Now, after 13 years, he can say he has celebrated Mass on every 14er in the state.

“Saying Mass on the summit of 14ers is probably the greatest gift and privilege of my whole life,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything I’ve desired more that’s awoken my interior depths more profoundly. It’s just absolutely truly the summit of my priestly life.”

“Then of course being a priest and being a shepherd and a guide spiritually,” he added, “helping people physically climb to the heights and doing that in such a way as to lead them to the spiritual heights in Christ — that to me is what has made priestly life so deeply meaningful and impactful.”

Another aspect Nepil touched on was how taking individuals on hikes serves as an opportunity for fellowship and evangelization. 

Nepil shared that when he was a newly ordained priest, he was assigned as the chaplain at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He realized very quickly that there were “a lot of great students there but a lot of their friends didn’t feel comfortable coming to Mass and didn’t want anything to do with church.”

He decided to start an outdoor club called Aquinas Alpine and began to take people on “adventures in the mountains, and that’s really where it became a ministerial life,” he said.

“You just hang out with people on the mountains and all the questions start to naturally come and the relationships form. It’s just an amazing atmosphere for facilitating communion but also for conversion.”

In his work now in the seminary, Nepil shared how he constantly encourages the men “to do hard things together.”

“Our world is built right now to eliminate discomfort, and that’s actually bad for our humanity,” he said. “As humans, we need to live with intention. We need to be challenged. Muscles need to be broken down so they can be rebuilt. It’s the same with relationships — that if we just kind of float on the surface and live comfortably we’re actually never growing and relationships aren’t being strengthened.”

“So we have to actively go into the backcountry and embrace a kind of preindustrial, non-technological life in order to recover our humanity, and when we do that together, it authenticates our relationships and deepens them in the reality of who we are as created beings.”

As for what individuals who go on hikes with him are taking away from the experience, he said he hopes it’s that they have a “qualitatively different experience of relationship.”

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“As things slow down, things crystallize, perception is heightened, and that awakens spiritual questions and hopefully it begins to form a spiritual vision to interpret reality,” he said. “We’re made to interpret. Things are meaningful … but we only find true happiness and wholeness as persons when we interpret being and the experiences in our life as meaningful, and I think that the conditions of being in creation on a backcountry adventure really facilitates that in a deep way.”