Welcome to Thursday, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

The sun will rise in Denver at 7:17 a.m. and set at 4:39 p.m., and yet the city and state are still approximately two days out from seeing any new snow. 

One of two storm cells is still spinning off the coast of California, and produced large precipitation amounts for cities like San Francisco and San Jose Wednesday. In the Sierra Nevada’s, Mammoth Mountain received 4-6 inches of snow in the last 24 hours.

As this storm makes its way into Colorado sometime Saturday, a second storm, currently over Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, then coming down from Montana, is still forecast to merge with the first.

Small amounts of moisture from the first storm pushing a wave into the state dropped between 1-2 inches at southern and west-central resorts in Colorado Wednesday night. A-Basin received a surprise shot of snow overnight too.

As reported Wednesday, resort snow around the rest of the state is still very hard and firm, and sticking to groomers for the rest of the week will ensure better skiing and riding experiences until more snow falls on the weekend.

Saturday’s storm should bring ample, thicker-density snow in the morning to the southern mountains, then cooler air will dry out the snow and fluffier snow should fall into Sunday morning.

For Sunday’s first chair at the San Juan’s resorts, expect 4-8 inches of snow. 

Sunday into Monday, the two storms will have moved to the east of Colorado, allowing for snow accumulations in the northern and central mountains.

By first chair Christmas Day, snow accumulation totals forecast from the ECMWF model in the southern mountains range between 8-16 inches, central mountains 4-8 inches, and northern mountains 4-12 inches.

Powder days are coming. Sunday for the southern mountains and Monday for the central and northern mountains. Merry Christmas!

Today’s 24 hour snow total from Colorado resorts:

Arapahoe Basin – 1″

Aspen Mountain – 1″

Aspen Highlands – 1″

Beaver Creek – 0″

Breckenridge – 0″

Buttermilk – 0″

Cooper – 0″

Copper Mountain – 0″

Crested Butte – 1″

Echo Mountain – 0″

Eldora Mountain – 0″

Granby Ranch – 0″

Hesperus – 1″, Opens mid-Dec.

Howelsen Hill – 0″

Kendall Mountain – 1″, open weekends

Keystone – 0″

Loveland – 0″

Monarch – 0″

Powderhorn – 1″

Purgatory – 1″

Silverton – 1″, Heli-only, guided Dec. 28

Snowmass – 1″

Steamboat – 0″

Sunlight – 0″

Telluride – 1″

Vail – 0″

Winter Park – 0″

Wolf Creek – 1″