The winter weather that’s eluded southeast Wyoming for months returned with a vengeance on Tuesday, with southeast Wyoming getting a blanket of heavy, wet snow that contained nearly 1 inch of water.
And there’s more expected, with snow falling steadily throughout the day.
Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day was still compiling the totals by publication time, but he could confidently say the amount of moisture received in Cheyenne from the May snowfall is “fantastic.”
“I measured the water equivalent on the west side and had another meteorologist friend of mine measure on the east side,” he said. “He measured 0.94 inches, and I measured 0.91 inches.”
With the precipitation anticipated overnight, Day said Cheyenne and Laramie will get well over an inch of water by Wednesday morning.
That's more than either community saw in either of the months of March and April.
“I think this is the biggest 24-hour moisture event in the southeast corner of Wyoming since November, at least, and probably going back to August 2025,” he said. “It’s been a million-dollar storm, and it's not done yet."
Million-Dollar Storm
The rain and wet, heavy snow that fell on Wyoming is the result of a confluence of weather systems that happened to converge over southern Wyoming.
As much as 10 inches of snow was anticipated in the Snowy and Laramie Mountains, and there’d be enough strength to get moisture into the foothills.
“I like to call these million-dollar storms because of the beneficial impact it's going to have on agriculture, people's lawns, plants, trees, and all of those things,” Day said. “It's going to pay huge dividends.”
Huge dividends for Cheyenne and Laramie, certainly, but not much farther beyond that.
While communities north of the capital city, like Torrington, Wheatland, and Lusk, got in on some of the action with a sprinkle while the deluge was concentrated further south.
Day said the storm's geographical scope was never large, but he hoped it would be wide enough to reach farther north. Still, the southeast corner was the area that needed this moisture the most as it's currently experiencing exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“This is one of those situations where everything lined up in one place just at the right time,” he said. “It's certainly not ending the drought by any stretch of imagination, but it took a little nibble out of it.”
Not Done Yet
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, the snow was still falling across Cheyenne and Laramie. According to Day, there was more coming overnight.
“There's another system coming down from the northwest that will keep it snowing through the overnight and early morning hours in the southeast and central part of the state,” he said.
That bounty will stretch further south. The Denver-metro area in Colorado received a comparable amount of precipitation on Tuesday and will continue to get more overnight and into Wednesday morning.
“They’re just getting started down there,” Day said.
Day was most enthused about how this much-needed precipitation would benefit the critical North Platte and South Platte River basins. This storm bulls-eyed on this region, adding much-needed water to their historically low snowpacks.
“While it's true snowpack, it's still snow that's going to be melting into the river systems,” he said. “The mountain ranges in those areas are going to get well over 2 to 3 inches of water out of this, and that’s really important for Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska.”
Don’t Look Too Far Ahead
The extended forecast for Wyoming shows temperatures rising into the 50s and 60s again by Friday. Scattered showers and thunderstorms are expected across Wyoming over the weekend, giving the state another chance for more moisture.
Is this the first sign of a promising trend? After “the winter that wasn’t,” and the long-range weather modeling that promised a lot of trends that never happened, Day won’t speculate beyond the weekend.
“Our hearts have been broken many times this year,” he said. “This system came to fruition, and it was really helpful, but we need to take this one step at a time. I don’t see another big weather maker in the next seven days, and I’m not comfortable going past that.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
