Not sure exactly where you live Nate, but here's the Winter Storm Warning that was issued at 4:30 a.m. MDT in your area:
COZ040-043-161845-
/O.CON.KBOU.WS.W.0006.160416T1200Z-160417T1200Z/
NORTH DOUGLAS COUNTY BELOW 6000 FEET/DENVER/WEST ADAMS AND
ARAPAHOE COUNTIES/EAST BROOMFIELD COUNTY-
CENTRAL AND SOUTH WELD COUNTY-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...AURORA...BRIGHTON...CITY OF DENVER...
DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT...HIGHLANDS RANCH...LITTLETON...
PARKER...EATON...FORT LUPTON...GREELEY...ROGGEN
439 AM MDT SAT APR 16 2016
Nope. Note the distinct lack of mention of Elbert County,
@scottd ... the "lost" county. The problem with issuing a county-wide warning is that the county extends so far East, but the weather is ALWAYS significantly different across the county in upslope and winter storm conditions. (It's also quite different in thunderstorm season.)
I've had all sorts of fun explaining to the folks that are re-arranging the NWS transmitter links for the All-Hazards radio sites that...
- Yes... it's nice that the State of Colorado is giving you audio links on their State microwave backbone to make maintenance simpler of these transmitters... you can send audio from ONE site to multiple transmitters.
- No, you can't use the Denver audio feed for the Deer Trail and Franktown transmitters because Denver is NOT programmed to transmit Elbert County SAME codes.
- No, when you disconnected that, and decided to make a new audio feed sourced from (unknown site) for Deer Trail and Franktown, you somehow removed SAME code programming for Deer Trail.
- Yes, the Deer Trail transmitter works better into NW Elbert County than the Franktown or Denver transmitters because of TERRAIN... we're on the EAST side of the ridge, not the WEST or SOUTH sides of it.
The old RF engineer that used to maintain these (before the State guys and a newbie got involved) seemed to understand where the RF would go by ... oh... looking at a topo map and knowing where a 100W VHF transmitter would work... and programming the individual sites SAME codes appropriately... but now you can be tuned to the absolute best-sounding full-quieting transmitter for 50-100 miles... and not know you're not going to get alerted at all in that area...
It's been fun to watch what I assume are IT/DATA geeks trying to deal with VHF RF broadcast... hahaha... wow... totally clueless.
Anyway, back on topic... Boulder doesn't issue stuff properly for Elbert County. They lump the populated portion of the county (Western 1/3) in with whatever they decided is happening out on "the plains" (Eastern 2/3). It's really common for that to occur. Thus, I pay more attention to the "High Elevation Douglas County" watches and warnings than I do the Elbert ones.
Mix the All-Hazards alert mess (have to tune a barely copyable transmitter instead of Deer Trail to even hit the SAME alerts for the county -- and I'll admit, they may have fixed this since last summer, but I'll have to check it with multiple alert radios when summer and t-storm season rolls in and there's enough alerts happening to compare quality and copyability as well as copy which codes are alerted in which priority on each of the three receivers) ... and Boulder forgetting Elbert is populated heavily on the western 1/3... and the alerts for our little rural area fall to about 1/2 of the quality of the alerts for Douglas/Denver Metro.
By the way... the warning above included Greeley. They got a whopping 3". Hahahaha... We had blizzard conditions for hours and well over 20"... and were in the "Winter Weather Advisory" area.
Upslope kinda needs orographic lifting, and the ridge is on the border between Douglas and Elbert... it's all DOWNHILL from Denver to Greeley... hahaha... it RAINED up there, which is exactly what I, as a native, would expect with an ABQ Low... Greeley never gets anything from those...
