Sixteen Inches in a Day: Pueblo’s November 1985 Snowstorm
The National Weather Service lists 16.0 inches on November 14, 1985, as the biggest one-day snowfall in its Pueblo records, which begin in 1888.
According to the Weather Service’s Pueblo extremes table for November, 16.0 inches of snow and 0.68 inches of precipitation fell on November 14, 1985. Both are still the listed records for that date. The office’s record-snowfall page puts the snowfall at the top of its one-day list, ahead of 14.0 inches on November 3, 1946.
What the news report said
A United Press International story dated November 15, 1985, and carried by the Los Angeles Times, described a weeklong winter storm. It said the storm “smashed record lows and dumped up to five feet of snow in the Rockies” before spreading to the Great Plains.
The one sentence about Pueblo reads: “Schools were closed for the second day in Pueblo, Colo., where 16 inches of snow fell in 24 hours, just 0.3 inches short of a record.”
That last phrase does not match today’s tables. The Weather Service now lists 16.0 inches as the one-day record. Its record page also gives a separate greatest-in-24-hours figure of 16.8 inches, from April 1 and 2, 1957. That is 0.8 inches above 16.0, not 0.3.
The sources do not explain the gap. It could reflect a different counting period or a record book that has since changed, but that is a guess. The record shows only that the two accounts differ.
A snowy month
The Weather Service lists November 1985 at 23.5 inches. That ranks third among Pueblo Novembers, behind November 1946 (29.3 inches) and November 1991 (25.6 inches). On its all-time monthly list, the 23.5 inches ties February 2015.
The extremes table also shows another snowfall record from the month: 6.0 inches on November 19, 1985.
The cold that followed
Three daily records in the extremes tables for the end of November and the start of December come from 1985. They are record-low daytime highs: 21°F on November 30, 19°F on December 1 and 12°F on December 2.
Those figures show a cold stretch. They do not show how long snow stayed on the ground, and the pages do not say.
Later accounts
In a November 2014 report, KRDO wrote that the Weather Service “lists storms in November, 1985, and 1946 as the city’s worst.” The page gives no snowfall totals for either storm. It does not say which National Weather Service document it was drawing on.
What we don’t know yet
The only local effect confirmed in the sources the Ledger opened is the school closing, on the second day. The UPI story does not say how many schools or which district. The sources do not establish road closures, injuries, damage, or when plowing finished.
Records that could fill that in include 1985 Pueblo newspapers for November 14 to 20, district school-closure notices, and the Weather Service’s original station observations.