Heavy snow falls in Colorado as winter storm arrives

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live just as heavy snow began along I-25 in Colorado on the evening of Dec. 8.

Transcript

00:00 will be a snowy end to the week across the Rockies as a winter storm is set to bring

00:04 over a foot of snow. Meteorologist Tony Loback joins us now from Monument, Colorado, where

00:09 the snow has already started falling on cue. We were just talking to Tony a second ago

00:13 and he said, "According to the AccuWeather app, the snow will be starting any minute

00:16 now." And sure enough, it looks like we're in a Star Wars movie.

00:20 Oh yeah, and Kevin, I was using the AccuWeather app to make sure I was in the right spot for

00:26 this hit because I was not going to get through the end of the night without standing in some

00:30 snow. Behind me, I-25, you see the headlights already. It has been snowing here for only

00:35 about 15 minutes and already there's a coat of snow on Interstate 25 right now. Traffic

00:41 has been steadily slowing down. You see it coming down really, really heavy right now.

00:46 We're talking maybe inch plus hour snow rates with this. Again, this started just about

00:50 15 minutes ago. This is actually just a band of snow that we're dealing with right now.

00:54 We're not really so much dealing with the widespread snow that we're expecting later

00:58 tonight. So we expect this band to kind of start to wind down here probably over the

01:02 next half hour or so. But you can already see making a mess of things. I want to show

01:06 you something here really quick here because this was what the temperatures looked like

01:10 in the region over the last 24 to 48 hours. We're talking 71 degrees and 63 degrees. And

01:17 again, that was 24 plus hours ago. And you could see what we've already transitioned

01:22 to now is the snow. Welcome to Colorado in December, folks. Snow did kind of go off and

01:26 on throughout the day. We saw minor accumulations from a morning band that came through. Then

01:31 things kind of died down a little bit. We had a little afternoon snow showers. And then

01:35 we're going to come back to me live because this is what we are in right now. Again, this

01:39 is just south of Denver Monument here. So we're on the basically the north side of Colorado

01:44 Springs on Monument Hill. We're at an elevation here about 2000 feet higher than what it is

01:49 in Denver. So we're seeing the snow here first. We do have winter storm warnings in effect

01:54 for this particular area. So travel on I-25. We're going to go downhill in a hurry tonight.

01:59 Could be looking up upwards of a foot here south and west of Denver. Denver proper, it's

02:05 going to be a little tricky on that. Just depends on how far east that snow gets. I'm

02:09 thinking Denver proper is probably going to be in the three to six inch range. But if

02:12 you're in the western suburbs, Golden, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, you're probably

02:16 going to see half a foot or more with this. You can see coming down heavy right now. This

02:21 is what TV's made for. Am I right here, Kevin? You are so right, Tony. That's a great shot.

02:27 And you positioned yourself perfectly so the snow is not hitting you in the face, which

02:31 is good. It's coming at you from your back. And we can see the radar right here. We've

02:35 got some heavy snow bands definitely rolling through Colorado. Here's Castle Rock and Colorado

02:40 Springs. There's a very strong band of snow moving through. Also, Denver starting to pick

02:44 up on some snow as well. And as Tony mentioned, he's saying three to six inches for Denver.

02:50 At least three the way it looks now. Maybe a little bit more by the time we get to daybreak

02:55 tomorrow morning.