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After that wacky high-temperature winter and with Colorado in a drought, the 5.8 inches of snow that landed in Denver on May 6 came as a welcome relief.
But with an eye on her garden, it also prompted this question from Roxane in Capitol Hill: “I hear it’s predicted to snow on May 18. What’s the latest snow ever recorded in Denver city limits?”
For the latest edition of our Weekly WTF series, we shoveled through historic statistics to get the answer.
The latest recorded…sort of
On July 17, 1872, a weather observer with the U.S. Army Signal Service stationed in Denver recorded a very rare summer snowfall in his journal: Rain began at 1:30 a.m., he wrote, and changed to snow around 3 a.m. for about 30 minutes before changing back to rain.
That occurence didn’t land in Denver’s official snowfall records, however, because the National Weather Service didn’t begin taking records until January 1, 1882, almost six years after Colorado became a state.
While snow in July would be one for the books, snow on May 18 wouldn’t even rank in the top 10 of late snowfalls. According to the National Weather Service, the latest on record is .03 inches on June 2, 1951. But on June 29, 1975, Denver saw a whopping 5.6 inches. And more recently, on May 22, 2022, Denver registered .5 inches.
Even if Denver doesn’t see snow this week, it won’t be long before we do again. While the average date of the first measurable snowfall in town is October 18, on September 3, 1961, Denver registered 4.2 inches. (Last year, the first snow in a no-show season was November 29, the latest in ten years.)
Location, location, location
Climate change isn’t the only thing affecting snowfall measurements. Where the National Weather Service does it measurements makes a difference, too.
Since Denver snowfall records began in 1882, there have been three main locations for Official Snowfall Observations, according to the NWS: in downtown Denver (1882 to 1949), at Stapleton Airport (1950 to August 2007), and at Denver International Airport (September 2007 to Present), where four measurements are taken a day.
“As you can see,” the NWS advises, “the current official observation at DIA has moved several miles to the east and northeast of the previous two locations. In general, as you go the further east and northeast of the higher terrain, seasonal snowfall drops off dramatically. For example, the western and southwestern suburbs of Denver average between 65″ to 70″ per season while areas in and near DIA are around 47″.”
So people on the southwestern side of Denver may see snow even if none lands at the airport…or in official records.
Odds of snow on May 18, 2026
On May 17, the National Weather Service said that a winter weather advisory would be in effect from late that day until 6 p.m. Monday, May 18, for Colorado’s mountains, with up to a foot of snow predicted. The NWS also issued a Freeze Watch that runs from late Monday, May 18, through early Tuesday, May 19, with temperatures as low as 30 along “the I-25 Urban Corridor and all of the plains of northweat Colorado.”
Even if Denver dodges a snowball this round, there will still be another two weeks before the date of the latest spring snowfall, so keep those garden covers at the ready, Roxane.
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