For 2/19/09: Aside from some slight changes in another round of moisture that will brush the area through Friday night we are seeing the pattern progress as expected. We will see some lingering remnants offering snow showers along the divide and higher terrain this morning with skies clearing through the afternoon.

This high pressure ridge setting up will open the door to valley inversions with the snow covered valleys in for some cold clear nights. Last night was a good indicator that this pattern has formed with Gunnison reporting a low of -2 degrees while Crested Butte dropped to -1. The higher elevations and ridges will rebound faster than the valleys but look for mostly sunny skies to offer above normal highs into the weekend with the low 30’s expected valley wide. With this inversion we can expect cold clear nights with lows dropping to the negative single digits and beyond.

The high pressure ridge forming over the west will keep us in sunny skies into the beginning of next week. The combination of the fresh snow from this week and the beautiful blue skies will make the end of this week and the weekend an incredible time to get outside. With significant temperature swings expected be sure to bundle up if you are headed out early but have disposable layers.

Look for a complete Crested Butte and Gunnison weather report, 24 hour trends and real time weather information now available at WWW.CBTV.TV.