Right on time for Christmas, the first in a series of snowstorms blew into western Colorado Monday with more snow predicted for Christmas Day and afterwards. The last week of the year is forecast to be warmer and wetter than normal.

December’s first snowstorm dumped 12.5 inches in Ouray on the 9th. Before that, a sunny run of eight warm days with minimal snow underfoot enhanced Ridgway’s Noel Night on the 6th, Ouray’s Yule Celebration on the 7th, and Ouray’s historic hotel tour on the 8th.

In another happy event, Ouray’s wellfed bear population finally headed to their backcountry winter sleeping quarters during November’s pre-Thanksgiving 9.2inch snowstorm. Local fruit tree owners and their dogs slept through the night for the first time in months. In my yard the bruins left behind six brutally truncated trees, pervasive poop, a raided, upended compost bin and ransacked garden beds.

And there’s more, though temporary, good weather news: 2024’s June-October heat streak took a break in Ouray in November. Daytime temperatures averaged a cool 42.6 degrees, 3.4 below normal (46). Nights averaged 22.5 degrees, 1.9 below normal (24.4). Precipitation, 3.17 inches, was a remarkable 84% above normal (1.72). Snow, 31.6 inches, was a healthy 69% above normal (18.7).

Retired meteorologist Timothy Spangler of Log Hill wrote in a Dec. 6 email that he has been anticipating the use of artificial intelligence in local weather forecasts, though with some skepticism.

“Lots of hype out there, but I was waiting for a definitive article in a distinguished scientific journal. One just came out in Nature — one of the most prestigious journals around. The article concludes: AI and the Google DeepMind GenCast project has demonstrated all we could hope for and more. It is able to produce a 15 day forecast in 8 minutes and do better than the European Models which are arguably the gold standard of physical computation forecast models.”

One of Spangler’s doubts about AI has been “how will it handle the inherent chaotic and unpredictable nature of weather, and they have introduced a random noise generator to examine all the potential solutions to a particular weather event — very cool and a critical addition to the forecast.” Another unresolved area remains: “How it can handle very unusual events that the machine learning process was not exposed to in the period they used, 1979 to 2018. We will see about that.”

Overall, he is excited that this “could usher in a new era of quality weather forecasting. The NWS (National Weather Service) has not yet adopted this but is deep in research on how to assure it protects public safety and how to apply it to unique local weather issues.” He says, “There is much to be figured out about how to take the large scale high quality forecast the DeepMind GenCast model produces and apply it to little old Ridgway and Ouray.”

One looming question is whether National Weather Service forecasters like the folks in Grand Junction will be needed in the AI era of large-scale forecasting. “Forecasters still have to use these good computer forecasts to tailor forecasts to local cities,” Spangler said. “In addition, the short term forecasts of thunderstorms, tornado warnings, flash floods, etc. are still critical functions of local weather forecasters like we have at the NWS in Grand Junction.”

I asked him about Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposed nonofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” in the upcoming Trump administration and their embrace of Project 2025’s proposed dismantling of the National Weather Service. They say abandoning NWS would save money, that commercial operations like AccuWeather.com would take over weather forecasting. Spangler replied: “Some people worry that weather forecaster jobs are threatened but think of this as really good computer forecasts like we have today, and forecasters still have to use these … to tailor forecasts to local cities. In addition, the short term forecasts of thunderstorms, tornado warnings, flash floods, etc. are still critical functions of local weather forecasters.”

He also noted that “that no private company would accept the potential liability of issuing tornado forecasts unless Congress provides protection from lawsuits so we probably have to have a NWS anyway for warnings.”

Spangler was chair of the American Meteorological Society Board on Private Sector Meteorology in the 1990s.

He explains that the weather section in Project 2025 “was authored by Joel Myers and he’s the founder of Accu-Weather so the discussion is very one-sided and also not likely to be adopted. Many Republicans live in tornado alley and I have found that they are not very supportive of privatizing the National Weather Service, so I suspect it won’t happen.” Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get. — Mark Twain Karen Risch gardens, records weather for NOAA and CoCo-Rahs, writes and hikes in Ouray. Her Wunderground weather station ID is KCOOURAY3, transmitting weather from latitude N38 1’ 34”, longitude W107 40’21”, Elevation 7,736’. A purpleair.com air quality monitor RISCH operates at the same location.