Cold, wet snow showers are likely in store for Summit County and the surrounding mountain region as early as Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday morning. 

“At this point, it doesn’t look particularly heavy, but enough to give a little bit of snow to the valley area,” said Chad Gimmestad, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Boulder office. 

According to Gimmestad, predictions show lower-elevation valley areas, which include most towns, could see between 1 or 2 inches of snowfall by Thursday. Higher-elevation areas could see even more. 

Snowfall is likely to be heaviest in more northern mountain regions such as Steamboat, Gimmestad said. Temperatures will begin to drop from around 50 degrees on Wednesday to a low of 23 degrees on Thursday morning in the Silverthorne and Dillon area. 

An Oct. 9 blog post by Colorado meteorologist Joel Gratz on the website OpenSnow.com predicts some mountain areas could see as much as 8 inches of snowfall into Friday morning. Snow could accumulate as low as 7,000 feet, and mountain passes in the northern and central mountains will likely be snow-covered during the darker hours on Thursday morning, Thursday night and Friday morning, Gratz wrote. 

“I think most road surfaces will be wet due to the energy from the early-October sunshine making it through the clouds, though if the snowfall rates are high enough, roads could be snow-covered on Thursday during the day,” Gratz wrote. 

Temperatures are expected to rise again by the weekend and hover in the 50s, Gimmestad said. Because lower temperatures are still near freezing, and with the addition of heavy sunlight, snow is expected to be wet and heavy, potentially icing sidewalks and less traveled streets, he added. 

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Summit County has seen below-average precipitation and above-average temperatures in recent weeks. So far in October, data from the Dillon area shows temperatures are about 3 degrees above normal while the September average was 1.4 degrees above normal, according to Gimmestad.

Data from the same area also shows that September saw an average of 0.83 inches of precipitation, below the normal of 1.47 inches.

The impending snow storm marks the fourth major dusting since fall began and comes as neighboring ski resorts continue to ramp up snow-making efforts. 

Keystone Resort and Arapahoe Basin Ski Resort, which often jockey to be the first mountains open for ski season, are both eyeing tentative start dates in mid- to late-October. Copper Mountain Resort and Breckenridge Ski Resort are likely to open in November. 

Anticipation is also building amongst meteorologists that this coming winter and spring could see a strong El Nino pattern that typically brings more precipitation and cooler temperatures to southern regions with dryer conditions in the north — though they have also cautioned this system has little bearing on central mountain areas like Summit. Long range forecasts based on El Nino have been mixed.

An analysis by OpenSnow meteorologist Sam Collentine in August during the last El Nino ski season, which was 2015-16, Copper saw below-normal snowfall of 93% of the 30-year median.

However, the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research said recently that current El Nino conditions are likely to develop into one of the strongest events on record and could be comparable to the major El Nino event of the 1997-98 season. Last year, the Blue River Basin, which encompasses Summit County, saw its snowpack peak at a snow water equivalent of around 17 inches, while the 1997-98 season reached around 22 inches.