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Late Spring Storm Brings Snow to Colorado and Wyoming

False-color Terra MODIS imagery and a snow cover index help distinguish clouds from snow on May 7, 2026.

Snow fell across the Rocky Mountains and the Front Range of Colorado and Wyoming between May 5 and 6, 2026. Cheyenne, Wyoming, received almost 12 inches of snow, the most from a snowstorm since mid-March 2021. Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado received almost 3 feet of snow, and about 6 inches fell on Denver, which had its biggest May snowstorm since 2003.

This false-color corrected reflectance (Bands 7-2-1) image has been overlaid with a snow cover data layer — the normalized difference snow index — to show the snow coverage from the storm on May 7, 2026. This false-color band combination is useful for distinguishing snow and ice (darker cyan) from clouds (brighter cyan to white). The data come from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra platform.

The comparison above shows the difference in snow cover changes between May 2 and May 7. Zoom in on the map and swipe the center bar back and forth to compare the images and see higher snow cover around Cheyenne and across Colorado.  

Visit Worldview to visualize near real-time imagery and historical imagery from NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS); find more imagery in our Worldview weekly image archive.

Details

Last Updated

May 8, 2026

Published on

May 8, 2026

Data Center/Project

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Adaptive Processing System SIPS
National Snow and Ice Data Center DAAC (NSIDC DAAC)
Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System DAAC (LAADS DAAC)