Leadville right now live

Daily brief · Friday, August 21

Race eve. This is the second read of the evening, written at 9 PM off the 8:41 and 8:42 PM products, and three of the numbers we published two hours ago have moved. Friday first, because Friday is easy. The Lake County zone forecast issued 8:42 PM Thursday has mostly sunny in the morning, then mostly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms, highs 70 to 82, northwest winds up to 10 mph. The NWS gridded hourly numbers climb from 6 percent at 10 AM to a 20 percent peak at 3 PM and fall back to 3 percent by 11 PM, and the quantitative precipitation forecast is zero for every Friday block. Open-Meteo caps the day at 10 percent with no measurable rain. Sunrise 6:24, sunset 7:52, low near 51, UV 8.3. Friday night is mostly cloudy with 10 percent until midnight, lows 42 to 50. Air quality 27 to 47 with PM2.5 topping at 2.4 micrograms per cubic metre, which is about as clean as this valley gets, and no NWS alert covers the county. THE WIND CAME DOWN, and this is the first correction. Tonight's run of the model puts Friday gusts up high at 16 mph on Hope Pass at 5 PM, 19 on Mosquito at 7 PM and 19 on Elbert at 6 PM. The 6:45 PM pull had 26 on Hope and 24 on Mosquito. If you read this morning's version and planned around a breezy evening on the ridges, the model no longer supports that. Friday temperatures up high read Hope 46 to 65 F, Mosquito 42 to 61, Elbert 38 to 57. Friday is a good day to be outside, a good day to drive in, and a good day to walk to the athlete meeting. Now Saturday. The headline did not move and the shape did not move, which after four days of the number sliding around is the useful part. The zone forecast still says 90 percent, cloudy, periods of rain showers and a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, highs 68 to 80, light winds, with Saturday night at 60 percent and lows 41 to 48. The gridded product updated 8:41 PM reads 0 percent from midnight to 5 AM, 1 percent from 5 AM to noon, 90 percent noon to 3 PM, 74 percent 3 to 6 PM and 58 percent 6 PM to midnight. Open-Meteo has eased slightly, to 81 percent for 1 PM through 6 PM and 51 percent after 7, against 88 and 58 two hours ago. So the two sources have drifted a little further apart on the afternoon and both still put the dry window in the same place: the morning. A CORRECTION TO OUR OWN WORDING, which matters more than the drift. Earlier this evening we told you the NWS grid had switched to hourly resolution for race day. That was an over-read of the feed. The API collapses runs of equal values into a single block, so what we saw as hourly was a product whose finest race-day step is three hours: noon to 3 PM, then 3 to 6 PM, then a six-hour evening. Wednesday night's caveat therefore still stands in a softer form. Noon is a block edge, not an onset time. Treat the change as early afternoon, and treat three hours as the resolution you actually have. The volume story is the one that survived the second issuance intact, and it is still the thing to plan on. The grid holds 1.52 mm for noon to 6 PM and 4.57 mm for 6 PM to midnight, a day total of 6.09 mm, or 0.24 inches. Open-Meteo independently lands on 0.243 inches, which is closer agreement than we had at 6:45. Three quarters of Saturday's modeled water falls after 6 PM. That is the shape of this race day, it has now held across two consecutive NWS issuances, and it is what the gear decision should be built on. What that does to the race, using only the published cutoff ladder and nothing resembling a pace model. The gun is 4 AM, so noon is hour eight and 6 PM is hour fourteen. A runner exactly on cutoff pace is at Half Pipe, mile 31.8, at 12:15 PM, at Twin Lakes outbound at 2:15 PM, on Hope Pass outbound at 4:45 PM, at Winfield at 6:50 PM, and back at Twin Lakes inbound at 11:00 PM. The second correction is at Hope Pass, and it goes the cold way. Tonight the model reads 43 to 44 F from 3 to 7 AM, 55 by 9, 60 at noon, 61 at 2 PM, and then 57 F for 3, 4 and 5 PM rather than the 66 we published at 4 PM two hours ago. It is 55 at 6 PM, 48 at 7, 46 at 8, and 41 to 42 from 9 PM onward. Precipitation odds up there are 73 percent from 1 to 6 PM and 46 percent through the evening, down from 76 and 59. So the afternoon on Hope is roughly nine degrees colder than we said, and the evening is less likely to be wet than we said. Those two moves do not cancel. A 57 F afternoon with a 73 percent chance of rain is a worse place to be underdressed than a 66 F afternoon with a 76 percent chance, because the temperature is the part you cannot outrun. Gusts up there stay modest all day, peaking near 17 mph mid afternoon. The inbound Hope crossing and the run back to Twin Lakes still sit in the heaviest modeled water of the day, in the dark, at temperatures in the low forties. The front of the field still gets its whole day in the dry window. Everyone else should think about what goes into the Twin Lakes outbound drop bag rather than what they are wearing at 4 AM. The race's own weather page says it directly and has for years: do not attempt the round trip to Hope Pass without adequate warm and protective clothing. SUNDAY MOVED, and this is the third correction and the one nobody was watching. Two hours ago the 7-day strip showed Sunday at 58 percent living entirely in the midnight hour, with the rest of the day topping out at 34 percent, and we spent a paragraph explaining that it was not a rendering bug. Tonight both authorities have put a real afternoon on Sunday. The zone forecast says partly sunny with a 50 percent chance of thunderstorms, highs 65 to 77. The grid says 46 percent from noon to 6 PM. Open-Meteo has gone from 34 to 48 percent for 1 PM through 7 PM. The wet-window line under Sunday on our own strip changes with it, from wet near midnight to wet 1 PM to 7 PM. Here is why it matters to this weekend rather than to the week. Sunday morning is still dry on both products, 5 percent midnight to 6 AM and 2 percent 6 AM to noon on the grid, 1 to 3 percent on Open-Meteo. The official cutoff is 30 hours, so the last finishers come in by 10 AM Sunday, and the inbound Turquoise Lake Dam cutoff is 5:30 AM. The final push, the finish line and the awards all sit inside dry hours. What changed is the drive home. Sunday afternoon now carries a real storm chance over the passes where last night it carried almost none, and if you are towing, driving Independence or heading over Fremont with a tired crew, leaving in the morning is worth something it was not worth yesterday. Fire rules change at 12:01 AM tonight, and this one is easy to get wrong. The Forest Service replaced Stage 2 restrictions with Stage 1 across the Pike-San Isabel, including the Leadville Ranger District. Order 02-12-00-26-37 was signed Thursday and takes effect at 12:01 AM Friday, running through Nov 14. Under Stage 2 there were no campfires at all. Under Stage 1 campfires are allowed again, but only in a permanent metal or concrete fire pit or grate that the Forest Service installed and maintains at a developed campground or picnic area. Dispersed camping still means no fire, charcoal included. Liquid and gas devices with an on and off valve are still fine in a cleared area, and smoking is still restricted to an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site, or a cleared three foot circle. If you camped here last weekend under the old rules, the rules are different in the morning. The Willow Fire closure was also replaced. Order 02-12-01-26-36, signed Aug 19, effective 12:01 AM Friday through Sep 30, supersedes the August order we had been citing all month, and the affected recreation site list is different. Still closed: Mount Massive Wilderness, Mount Massive Trail 1487, Highline and Native Lake Trail 1489, Willow Creek Trailhead, Elbert Creek Campground, Halfmoon East and West Campgrounds, and Colorado Trail Segment 11 at the Mount Massive Trailhead. No longer on the list: North Mount Elbert Trail 1484, Windsor Lake Trail 1490, and North Halfmoon Creek Trail 1485. The described area now follows the north side of Halfmoon Creek east to the forest boundary. We are not going to tell you the standard Elbert north route is open, because the actual boundary lives on the map exhibit attached to the order and we cannot read a map into text. What we will tell you is that the three trails above came off the order's own rec-site list, that Elbert Creek Campground did not, and that the Leadville Ranger District answers at 719-486-0749. We re-read the full district alert list again at 9 PM Thursday: no change since the 6:45 PM sweep, and still no special-event road closure order posted for the Run. The MTB got one on NFSR 398 back on Aug 15. We will look again Friday and say either way. Roads, re-pulled live at 9 PM. Both corridor surfaces are still operator-confirmed dry, US 24 from Minturn to Buena Vista and CO 91 over Fremont Pass, both stamped 6:42 PM Thursday, with CDOT's own forecast line on each segment refreshed at 8:30 PM. Incidents on the corridor: zero, against 12 statewide, down from 16 at 6:45. Friday is still the lightest construction day of the week on the approach, and the only weekday zone in the feed is Minturn, MP 148 to 148.5, 7 AM to 7 PM. One thing did change in the feed between the two pulls: CDOT posted next week's windows. The resurfacing north of town at MP 170 to 174 now carries Aug 24 through Aug 28, and the Twin Lakes to Buena Vista paving at MP 192.7 to 202 now carries the same five days, where at 6:45 each showed only a subset. Neither gained a Friday or a Saturday entry, so the race-weekend picture is unchanged and now rests on a fuller schedule rather than on an absence. Two jobs run around the clock and both are live on race day: Minturn to Red Cliff at MP 152.5 to 154, alternating traffic and 11 foot width, in place at 3 AM Saturday for anyone driving down from I-70 and continuing in a second posted block through Aug 29; and the Arkansas River bridge at MP 213.5 near Johnson Village, one lane with full stops and 15 to 20 minute delays, through midnight Saturday. No weekday zones run on race day itself. Friday in town, from the official schedule: shakeout run 8:30 AM, mandatory athlete meeting 10 AM at the Lake County High School football field, packet pickup and expo 11 AM to 5 PM at 135 E 6th Street. Photo ID required, in person only, nobody can collect for you. Anglers, and the numbers here moved too, which is the diurnal swing doing exactly what it does. The Arkansas at Granite peaked at 66.7 F at 5:45 PM Thursday, over the 65 F trout-stress line, and by 7:45 PM it was back down to 63.9 F. Quote the hour or the number means nothing. Halfmoon Creek is 60.8 F and 7.49 cfs at 8:30 PM, cooling off the 63.1 F it read at teatime, and the Arkansas near Leadville is steady at 10.6 cfs. Fish early Friday. Saturday afternoon and evening will move all three, and Sunday afternoon now looks like it will move them again.

Written 2026-08-20, 9:00 PM MT. Every figure above carries the issue time of the product it came from, because on a moving pattern a number without an hour is not a fact.