It's May - which means warmth, flowers, trees with leaves, and no snow forecast maps for the vast majority of the country. Not here! In Colorado, May still means snow.
Since Teller County and our mountains will get the most snow with this system, let's first check out how common that is. Teller County lacks a dedicated permanent weather observation site, unlike Colorado Springs, Canon City, and Pueblo. This makes getting data much harder. So, I looked at data from the Community Collaborative Rain, Snow, and Hail Network, also known as CoCoRahs.
You can participate in that by the way - it's a citizen science network.
Combining all of the data from the last 11 years - I went back to 2013 - you won't be surprised to learn: that snow is common in Woodland Park and Teller County in May. However, big snow events above 6 inches are slightly less common. On average, Teller County gets a six (or more) inch storm once every 2 years. Some type of accumulating snow is almost always going to fall in May in Woodland Park though.
Since 2013, the highest-totaling snowstorm in Woodland Park was on May 21st, 2022. All of Teller County saw more than a foot of snow, some locations approached 2-foot totals. At the low end, a storm on May 9th, 2013 dropped anywhere between 3 and 8 inches of snow - with Woodland Park actually seeing some of the highest totals across the county. It's often feast or famine - some years, you get a giant storm in May, other years, it's a couple of inches of snow and that's it. On average, Woodland Park gets between 6 and 8 inches of snow in May...but again, that really depends on the year. That total in 2022 certainly lifts all boats for the years where you only saw an inch or two.
Last year's last snow was on May 11th and 12th. You may recall this storm as we were approaching Mother's Day weekend. With that storm, Woodland Park picked up 4-5" of snow, and a lot of moisture. Divide picked up 2.5"...of rain! And in Colorado Springs, we received nearly 3.2" of rain (which crushed the single-day record for the month of May). Also with that system, we had tornadoes on the eastern plains. Colorado in a nutshell.
Colorado Springs and Pueblo, given their lower elevation, see big snow much less often in May. Our last big May storm was in 2022 - the same one that gave Woodland Park the 1-2 foot totals dumped 10.3" at the Colorado Springs Airport. You have to go back to 2001 to find a May where we got at least 6" of snow before that (although the 5.1" we saw in 2019 was solid - and that was a May 19th and 20th storm interestingly enough).
On average the last accumulating snow in Colorado Springs and Pueblo is in April. Last year, the last accumulation in both Colorado Springs and Pueblo was on April 22nd, with slightly more than 1.5" in both cities.
The moral of the story here is that our May snowstorm in Woodland Park is fairly typical - occurring every couple of years. And, also typical - our First Alert 5 team is here, forecasting and updating you to help you stay informed and safe.
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