I'm away on vacation in Steamboat Springs, Colorado this week. My wife Sophie and I honeymooned here in 2016 and fell in love with it and now do our best to come back every year or two. This is our first time being back during the cold season.
We've enjoyed a few beautiful days of hiking with warm temperatures and blue skies, all with snow on the ground from a few snowfalls before our arrival. I'm doing my best to avoid weather work while I'm away, but I've been pretty excited to enjoy some early winter mountain weather.
Today's forecast called for shallow convective snow showers or snow squalls. I geek out over these things in the Midwest a time or two every winter. They're great for photogenic convective skies and curtains of precipitation gliding across the horizon. Get inside one and you'll be blasted by five minutes of white out snowy conditions with blustery winds. They're a traffic nightmare and can cause dangerous pile-ups on roadways, and thankfully the National Weather Service has begun addressing these dangers with new warnings.
For a meteorologist on vacation, it's an opportunity to have a little fun!