Posted on February 4th, 2025

Our Changing Landscape – First Major 2024-2025 Snowfall in Colorado

In this monthly feature, we span the globe to examine Our Changing Landscape with a time series of medium-resolution PlanetScope satellite imagery. The PlanetScope constellation dates back to 2016 and collects hundreds of millions of square kilometers of four and eight-band 3-meter imagery daily! In January, we looked at the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the widespread path of destruction she left behind in Asheville, N.C. For the February edition of this series, we are sliding into Colorado where the first major winter storm of 2024-2025 dumped nearly 3 feet of snow and shut down most major highways in the state with blizzard-like conditions.

Click on the image above to see an animation of 3-meter natural color PlanetScope image collected over the Idaho Springs, Colorado area on November 2 and 10, 2024. And wow what a difference a day makes as you can see that before the November 8, 2024 snowfall, this region was still in full, early Fall mode! (Images Courtesy: © Planet 2025)

The PlanetScope Microsat Constellation

PlanetScope is a constellation of more than 240 microsats referred to individually as Doves. Each Dove is able to collect up to 20,000 square kilometers (sq km) per day of 3-meter (m) 4-band multispectral (i.e. blue, green, red and near-infrared [NIR]) imagery; and newly launched SuperDoves collect 8-band multispectral adding in valuable red-edge spectral data. Across the constellation, PlanetScope is archiving more than 200 million sq km of medium-resolution imagery a day, making it the go to source for daily imagery over most locations. This massive archive dates back to 2016, offering the most complete and continuous record of spatial data on the planet since the start of the constellation’s ongoing launch schedule. Collecting 3-meter multispectral imagery is the equivalent of ‘high-resolution’ multispectral data imaged by a 75-centimer (cm) satellite (as this satellite would feature 75-cm panchromatic and 3-m multispectral), making PlanetScope an extremely competitively priced option at just $2.25 per sq km. With well registered images and nearly daily collections of most locations, PlanetScope is the ideal imagery source for this current-events focused series, Our Changing Landscape.

First Winter Snowstorm Buries Parts of Colorado

On November 8, 2024, Coloradans found themselves digging out of a whopping 3 feet of snow that fell between the Front Range and Eastern Plains. After five days of nearly non-stop snowfall, Colorado had to deal with its largest November snowstorm in decades. The snow stopped falling on Saturday after overnight blizzard-like conditions made travel impossible.

Government offices, schools and even some businesses closed that Friday. Governor Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency for the storm, authorizing the Colorado National Guard to step in and help impacted people; and he also activated the state emergency operations center. Denver received 9” (inches) of snow with 13” reported in Aurora and 15” in Highlands Ranch and Lakewood.

This last round of heavy snow developed in the morning hours of November 8th and continued through the early morning hours of November 9th. Additional accumulations during this period topped a foot of snow over the far southeast portions of the Denver metro area through much of rural Arapahoe, eastern Douglas and Elbert counties. This round of snow was very heavy and wet, and resulted in scattered power outages. Around 30,000 customers were without power in the Denver metro area on the morning of November 9th. Meanwhile, major interstates (I-70 east of Denver) and most highways remained closed in east-central Colorado. It took days to reopen some rural roads.

The storm’s impacts were not limited to the ground as travelers passing through Denver International Airport faced more than 1,300 canceled or delayed flights on Friday, including 269 canceled SkyWest flights, 127 canceled Southwest flights and 64 canceled Frontier flights.

If you would like to find out more about using 3-meter PlanetScope imagery for your academic studies, engineering projects or any landscape analysis, let us know at sales@apollomapping.com or (303) 993-3863.

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