Extreme Colorado weather breaks heat and snow records in a matter of days

The days before and after Labor Day 2020 are officially in the record books. Southern Colorado experienced a swing of 60-70 degrees from record heat over Labor Day weekend to fresh snow within 48 hours.

A ridge of high pressure brought summer heat for the holiday weekend, which was abruptly replaced by an unusually powerful winter-like system from Canada.

Pueblo

Pueblo saw several records broken from this event. A new daily record high was set on September 6th, at 103 degrees. The previous record was 100 from 1933.

Days later, the earliest first freeze in Pueblo was tied Wednesday morning, with the old record of September 9, 2001.

Then we add another record on top of that, the earliest snow recorded. 1 inch of snow fell as of September 9th, which breaks the old record of earliest first snow from September 10th, 1898 where a Trace was recorded, and the earliest measurable snow from September 17th, 1971 where 7.3 inches fell.

Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs also had record heat this past weekend, reaching a high of 97 on Sunday, September 6th, which breaks the previous daily high record of 93 set in 1945 and 1959. This also happened to be the hottest day of the year so far in Colorado Springs.

The records for the first freeze and snow still stand.

Alamosa

Buckle up for this one. On September 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Alamosa set daily record high temperatures. The 5th and 6th set a new monthly record high temperature of 89.

After that record high on the 8th, later that night they saw a daily record low of 28.

The snow total from this event was a whopping 13.8 inches which breaks the record for earliest snow, previously 1.2 inches on September 18th, 1971.

This also breaks the record for the greatest amount of snow for the first snowfall, which previously was 13.1 inches on October 30th, 1991.

Interested in some statistics from northern Colorado? Check out this tweet from the National Weather Service in Boulder: