Some parts of #boulder  are expected to get 10" of rain by midnight Frid…

Some parts of #boulder  are expected to get 10" of rain by midnight Friday.

What if it were later in the season, and therefore colder?

This storm could potentially have dumped as much as 10 FEET of snow on Boulder¹.

http://www.thelakewoodscoop.com/news/wp-content/uploads/snowed-in-doorway-covered.jpg

¹ …if it had been below 12*/ -11c. it being between closer to 30/-1c would be more likely – and that would have been closer to 5' of snow…but ten feet, man!

8 thoughts on “Some parts of #boulder  are expected to get 10" of rain by midnight Frid…”

  1. Unless it's warmer, or colder, than 25* F, because warmer snow is denser, and tends to melt, and colder snow (below 12*F) can be much less dense, and pack in 12" of snow to 1" of rain…

  2. Also the temp of the ground isn't air temp, and there will be a non-negligible melting as that equalizes. It would still be a metric fuckton of snow. Like, "let's go make a fort and have a snowball war," deep.

  3. 20" of rain-equivalent snow would be 80" of heavy snow to 200" of light fluffy snow. 

    Doing a little googling came up with this – the snow load requirements for Eagle County, Colorado.
    http://www.eaglecounty.us/Building/FAQ/#5

    Let's go with the 80" of moderately heavy snow, on the border between "light" and "packed" snow as an example. 
    http://www.nationwide.com/snow-load-barn-collapse.jsp

    80" (6.66') of snow weighing 20 pounds per square foot is 133 pounds per square foot.

    Applying the Eagle County Formula to a Denver roof at 5300', the design load for the roof is 21.78 pounds per square foot, which exceeds the design load by 501%.

    7 feet of snow would likely collapse every flat roof (where the snow can't/won't slide off) in the Denver Metro area.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top