Wasn’t it supposed to be ‘Snowmageddon’ in Boise? Confidence for heavy snow ‘remains high’
Earlier this week, the National Weather Service was forecasting up to potentially 18 inches of snow in Boise by Saturday night. By Thursday morning, snow total predictions dropped to about 12 inches, with snow set to arrive Thursday night and last throughout Friday before a second wave predicted for Saturday.
The impending “Snowmageddon” — which hearkens back to January 2017 when Boise picked up 21.5 inches of snow within a month — caused Boise State and several local school districts to close on Friday, but other districts such as Boise and West Ada remained open.
But when Boise residents woke up Thursday morning, snow lovers might’ve been slightly disappointed. Over 5 inches of plowed and shoveled snow from a storm earlier this week remains piled on sidewalks and grass embankments, but there was little additional snow overnight.
As of 6 a.m., the Weather Service recorded about an inch of additional snow, enough to cover roadways but far from the several inches forecast earlier in the week.
So, where’s all the snow?
When will the heavy snow return to Boise?
Weather Service meteorologist Dave Groenert remains confident that Boise will still receive a significant snowfall on Saturday. Forecasts for Boise remain between 6 and 10 inches of additional snow through the weekend, Groenert said, with a 60% chance of over at least 6 inches and a 30% chance of more than 8 inches.
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“It’s going to (arrive) probably after noon to 2 p.m.-ish or so, the afternoon basically,” Groenert said. “And then continuing through about sunrise Sunday morning.”
Groenert still expects between 1-3 inches to fall in Boise on Friday before an overnight break in the weather until it resumes Saturday afternoon.
It could have snowed a lot in Boise on Friday, too, if a strong band of snow was slightly more northward. A snow band is a narrow sliver approximately 20 to 50 miles long in which heavy snow falls repeatedly over the same area for several hours.
A snow band has set up just south of downtown Boise along the Interstate 84 corridor, in which heavy snow and wind gusts up to 60 mph are causing visibility of less than half a mile.
“That’s associated with an Arctic front that is kind of pushing slowly pushing through the area,” Groenert said.
That Arctic front is impacting Boise’s temperatures this weekend, along with how the snow will fall.
A snowy and chilly weekend in Boise
In the early hours of Friday morning, the temperature in Boise sat at 37 degrees. Typically, temperatures will slowly increase during the day before falling back down at night.
But not this time.
By 11 a.m. Friday, temperatures had dropped to 28 degrees and are set to continue falling to 5 degrees by early Saturday morning. The temperature will dip to as low as 2 degrees in the early hours of Monday morning.
The cooler temperatures also mean when snow eventually falls again in Boise on Saturday, it’ll land as soft and fluffy as opposed to moisture-heavy and thick.
This story was originally published January 12, 2024 at 11:58 AM.
