Joe Ruch, a First Alert meteorologist for CBS Colorado, drove to Devil’s Playground on Pikes Peak on the morning of October 1, 2026, and found 32 degrees at 13,058 feet with a wind chill that made it feel like 14. Around him lay the season’s first meaningful snow: up to 13 inches by 6 a.m., and 18 inches across the preceding five days.
The total is a closed one, neither a forecast nor a description of conditions now. The five days ran from late September into the first morning of October, and the storm had already moved on by the time the number was published, with forecasters calling for partly sunny skies above 11,000 feet and a 40 percent chance of rain and snow showers later that Thursday.
The National Weather Service Count and Its Window
The 18-inch figure comes from CBS Colorado’s report, updated at 11:59 a.m. MDT on October 1. According to that report, the National Weather Service said the season’s first meaningful accumulation fell on Wednesday, September 30, measuring up to 13 inches by 6 a.m. Thursday, for a total of 18 inches in the last five days. The words “up to” matter: they describe the deepest reading reported on the mountain, not an average across it, and the report does not say which gauge, observer or elevation produced the maximum, so the figure is best read as a summit-area total rather than a measurement at any one named station.
The timing also pins down the window. Because the 13 inches was counted through 6 a.m. on October 1, part of the 18-inch total fell after midnight, in October itself. A phrase like “before October arrived” would place the whole total in September, which the reporting does not support. The snow arrived as the month turned.
An Autoblog piece on early-winter snow around the country carried the same numbers, saying Pikes Peak picked up its season’s first meaningful snow with up to 13 inches overnight and 18 inches over five days, and credited CBS News Colorado as the original reporting. That roundup also noted 2 inches at Arizona Snowbowl, a ski area in a different state and a different storm setting, which is why the Pikes Peak figure should not be read as a regional average.
Forecast Spread Before the Storm
The outcome sat inside a wide forecast range. In a September 29 Denver Gazette preview, the National Weather Service’s high-end scenario put 12 or more inches around Arapahoe Basin and Keystone and “18-plus inches” for limited areas of the Collegiate Peaks near Mount Princeton. OpenSnow’s Joel Gratz saw only 1 to 2 inches at major ski areas, with a chance of six to 12 inches in select spots, and Mountain-Forecast.com listed 8 inches for Pikes Peak.
Against those numbers, a reported 13 inches by Thursday morning ran well above the one Pikes Peak figure in that preview. The storm was expected to run from Tuesday evening through Thursday morning, and the heaviest snow in the higher-probability scenario was expected south of Interstate 70, a track that could bypass Loveland Ski Area and favor the southern Colorado peaks. Meteorologists quoted in the preview called the event too light to open any resort but a promising early indicator for winter.
The same preview warned that precipitation type was uncertain, since late-September air can deliver rain instead of snow.
Drought Backdrop and the Station Record
CBS tied the storm to what it called the beginning of the El Niño pattern expected across Colorado this fall, and noted the state is coming out of drought, with its fifth driest January through July since records began in 1895. That figure is CBS’s, and it describes the state’s seven-month stretch, not Pikes Peak’s snow.
Official snow records for the area sit with the National Weather Service’s Pueblo office, which serves southern Colorado from its forecast office on Eaton Way, and with the automated stations of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. NRCS describes its SNOTEL network as snowpack telemetry sites in twelve western states, and its primary measurement is snow water equivalent, the water content of the snowpack, not depth in inches.
The distinction shows up in the Pueblo office’s Public Information Statement issued at 11:26 a.m. MDT on October 2. For the Pikes Peak area it lists a Glen Cove SNOTEL station, 2.5 miles northeast of Manitou Springs, with 2.51 inches of precipitation over the previous four days, while noting that observations come from varied sources with varying equipment and exposures. A liquid-equivalent reading and a depth report are different measurements, and the statement does not restate the 18-inch mountain total.
No station record that reproduces the 18-inch figure was located, so the number rests on the National Weather Service attribution in CBS Colorado’s report. Whether the Pueblo office later publishes a storm summary with a final Pikes Peak snowfall is not known.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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