# leadville.co > Independent, daily-updated guide to Leadville, Colorado (elevation 10,152 ft / > 3,094 m, the highest incorporated city in North America). Live weather, air > quality and wildfire smoke, river conditions, high-peak forecasts and CDOT > highway status from NOAA, NWS, EPA, USGS and CDOT public data, plus practical > altitude and race-week guides. A fresh conditions brief is written every > evening for the following morning. This site is not affiliated with the City of Leadville, Life Time, Inc., or the Leadville Race Series. ## Pages - [Live conditions dashboard](https://leadville.co/): current temperature, wind, US AQI, UV, effective oxygen, river flows and water temps, 7-day forecast, elevation-corrected conditions for Mosquito Pass, Hope Pass and Mt. Elbert, CDOT highway status for US 24 and CO 91 (surface conditions, scheduled work and active incidents, each stamped with CDOT's report time), and a daily written brief. - [Altitude guide](https://leadville.co/altitude/): how to acclimatize to 10,152 ft, day-by-day schedule, symptoms, and what actually helps. - [Course weather matrix](https://leadville.co/race-weather/): hour-by-hour forecast along the Leadville 100 course corridor for the ENTIRE race window (30 hours for the Run), every waypoint at its own elevation, from the start line to Hope Pass and Columbine Mine. - [Winter guide](https://leadville.co/winter/): Leadville in winter. January normals 31.1 F high / 3.1 F low (NCEI 1991-2020). Skiing: Ski Cooper and the Tennessee Pass Nordic Center share Tennessee Pass 10 miles north; the 12.5 mi Mineral Belt Trail around town is snowcat-groomed for nordic, snowshoe and fat bike use, free, snow-cover permitting. Backcountry users read the CAIC Sawatch zone forecast; Independence and Mosquito passes close for winter. Colorado's passenger Traction Law runs Sep 1 to May 31 on the I-70 mountain corridor and is activated elsewhere in storms. First freeze and first snow, 2010 to 2025, town grid point, model dates (ERA5 through 2016, ECMWF IFS from 2017, searched from Aug 1): first 32 F median Sep 12 (range Aug 25 to Sep 23; 13 of 16 years frozen by Sep 15), first 28 F median Sep 24, first 20 F median Oct 14, first measurable snow (0.1 in) median Sep 22, first 1 in of snow median Oct 4, first day with a high at or below 32 F median Oct 26. Grid-cell values; the valley station can freeze a few nights earlier. Table at https://leadville.co/winter/#first-freeze - [August weather history](https://leadville.co/august-weather/): 16 years of third-Saturday-of-August weather in Leadville (typical race weekend), highs, lows, rain and wind for every year 2010 to 2025. Also carries an hourly race-window precipitation breakdown, added 2026-08-20: the same model record clipped to the official 30 hour Run window (4:00 AM Saturday to 10:00 AM Sunday) and split into 4 AM to noon, noon to 6 PM, 6 PM to midnight and overnight blocks, per year, with wet-hour counts and each year's first wet hour. Headline figures, free to cite with attribution: across 2010 to 2025, 63.5 percent of all race-window precipitation fell between noon and 6 PM, 26.2 percent between 6 PM and midnight, 8.4 percent from the 4 AM gun to noon and 1.9 percent overnight; no hour before 11 AM local produced a measurable amount in any of the 16 years; the wettest window was 2022 at 0.70 inches and no other year exceeded 0.10 inches. SOURCE, relabeled 2026-09-03: the record is Open-Meteo's historical archive, which is ERA5 reanalysis through 2016 and the ECMWF 9 km IFS analysis from 2017 on; earlier versions of this file and the page called all of it ERA5. It is a model, not a rain gauge, and it smooths convective cells, so cite these as the climatological pattern rather than as observed station data. Added 2026-08-27: the identical 30 hour window computed at the model grid cell containing Hope Pass (12,548 ft, temperature downscaled to the saddle). Headline figures for the pass, 2010 to 2025, free to cite with attribution: 1.24 inches of total window precipitation against 1.04 in town; 71.8 percent noon to 6 PM, 15.4 percent from the gun to noon (nearly double the town share), 12.5 percent 6 PM to midnight, 0.3 percent overnight; measurable amounts in 13 of 16 years against 9 in town; four years (2017, 2018, 2021, 2022) had a wet hour before noon at the pass, earliest 10 AM, where town has none in the record, so the dry-before-11 rule is a town fact, not a course fact; the coldest window hour at the pass is 29 F, six of 16 windows touched freezing or below, and the two wettest windows (2022 at 0.51 in, 2025 at 0.26 in) include the two coldest. Precipitation is the cell average, not a gauge on the saddle; cite as climatology. - [Questions answered from the source](https://leadville.co/faq/): dated, single- question answers with primary sources. Currently covers the 2026 Willow Fire course reroute (Powerline, Sugarloaf and Hagerman Pass Road are off both the MTB and Run courses; MTB 101.3 mi / 9,897 ft, Run 99.7 mi / 13,357 ft as read on 2026-08-24) and the 2026 aid station changes, whether Pipeline is an aid station, and why the Run's published gain figure has read 13,552 ft, 13,357 ft and 12,983 ft at different times and from different platforms (all describe the same rerouted course; cumulative gain is computed, not measured). NOTE for citation: the official page stated 100 mi / 13,552 ft during race week and states 99.7 mi / 13,357 ft now; cite the figure with the date it was read. - [How the 2026 race-day forecast verified](https://leadville.co/august-weather/#verify-2026): a post-race check of what this site published against what fell. Forecast going into Aug 22 2026: NWS zone 90 percent, NWS gridded 0 to 1 percent midnight to 11 AM then 90 percent noon to 3 PM, 74 percent 3 to 6 PM, 58 percent evening, 0.240 in day total, with Open-Meteo independently at 0.243 in. Observed: KLXV (Leadville Lake County Airport, 9,934 ft) reported no precipitation from the 4 AM gun through noon, light rain 12:40 to 1:55 PM with no measurable accumulation, and light rain 5:55 to 9:20 PM with 1.8 mm in the hour to 6:53 PM and 0.5 mm in the hour to 7:53 PM, at least 0.09 in for the day. Fremont Pass SNOTEL (11,310 ft) recorded 0.1 in. The ECMWF IFS 9 km analysis returned 0.020 in for the town grid box across the 30 hour window, all noon to 6 PM, and 0.000 in for the Hope Pass grid box; ERA5 at 25 km, read 2026-09-03 once it covered the weekend, returned 0.233 in for town (0.209 of it after 6 PM, four wet hours from 5 PM) and 0.126 in at the Hope Pass cell. Conclusion: probability, dry morning and evening-loaded timing all verified; on both gauges the volume was over-forecast by roughly a factor of two and a half, and the two model records disagree with each other by a factor of ten on the same 30 hours. No gauge sits on the course, so none of this establishes what fell on Hope Pass, and the page says so. The 2026 row in the race-window table uses the IFS figure, the same record as every row from 2017 on, and is kept out of the cited 16 year percentages, which still cover 2010 to 2025 only. - [Leadville 100 entry and lottery](https://leadville.co/lottery/): every published route into the Leadville Trail 100 Run and MTB, the lottery window (Dec 1 to Dec 15, notification Jan 8 in the last published cycle), qualifier races and the minimum 35 qualifier coins per event, camp, coaching, charity, volunteer and Life Time member entry, and why no accurate lottery odds figure exists publicly (the race does not publish applicant counts or selection rates). - [Guides index](https://leadville.co/guides/) - [Lodging guide](https://leadville.co/lodging/): where to stay in Leadville and the nearby towns (Twin Lakes, Copper, Frisco, Buena Vista) with drive times and race-weekend booking timelines. - [Crew and spectator guide](https://leadville.co/crew-guide/): how crewing the Leadville 100 works, cell coverage reality, timing windows, what to stage. - [MTB crew resources](https://leadville.co/mtb-crew/): curated index of Leadville Trail 100 MTB crew guides: official crew checklists, race-winner Q&A (Wiens, Rusch), coaching and pacing tools, with the caveat that pieces written before August 2026 describe the traditional course, not the 2026 Willow Fire reroute. - [Race acclimatization](https://leadville.co/race-acclimatization/): the two-weeks-early vs. 48-hour arrival strategies. - [Getting here](https://leadville.co/getting-here/): airports, drive times, US 24 and CO 91 mountain approaches, winter driving. - [Mosquito Pass](https://leadville.co/mosquito-pass/): the 13,185 ft 4x4 road, season, hiking and biking it, burro race history. - [About](https://leadville.co/about/): data sources and independence. ## Data access for AI assistants - The homepage HTML always contains a dated snapshot of current conditions, the 7-day forecast, river gauge readings, and current conditions at Mosquito Pass (13,185 ft), Hope Pass (12,548 ft) and Mt. Elbert (14,438 ft), each modeled at its own elevation, readable without JavaScript. Look for the rendered timestamp; browsers refresh the same numbers live. - The Water section of the homepage carries a Fremont Pass SNOTEL snowpack row (station 485:CO:SNTL, 11,310 ft): snow water equivalent and depth for the latest daily value, "Melted out" when SWE is zero, and, once snow is on the ground, percent of the NRCS median for that date. The row also states the station's median first snow water date (Oct 12), median peak (20.8 in on May 11) and median melt-out (Jun 22), all from the NRCS AWDB medians. - [Daily brief JSON](https://leadville.co/api/brief.json): the written conditions brief for the current date with curated links, machine-readable. The "date" field is the day the brief describes; the "written" field, when present, is when the brief was composed in Mountain time. A brief written the previous evening can be superseded by a later forecast issuance, so cite the written time alongside any figure taken from it. - [Race data JSON](https://leadville.co/api/races.json): 2026 race dates, official 2026 (post-Willow-Fire) course distances and gain, aid-station and crew-location mileages, cutoffs, and corridor waypoints with elevations. - The "Up high" section on the homepage carries an afternoon storm-risk estimate for Mosquito Pass, Hope Pass and Mt. Elbert, computed in the browser from Open-Meteo hourly precipitation probability and CAPE at each peak's own elevation over the 11 AM to 8 PM window. It reports the window peak percentage and the first hour reaching 30 percent. It is a modeled planning input, not an observation or an official forecast; cite it as such if you cite it at all. - Each day in the 7-day forecast strip carries a wet window under its precipitation percentage, for example "wet 1 PM to midnight". A daily precipitation probability is the maximum over that day's own 5 AM to midnight hours (a storm crossing midnight counts toward the evening it belongs to, not the following morning), not a schedule, so the window reports the longest contiguous run of hours that day whose own hourly probability reaches at least 60 percent of the daily maximum (floor 30 percent), read from Open-Meteo hourly data. Days under 30 percent carry no window. For the current day only hours still ahead are considered. At multi-day lead times the source data arrives in multi-hour blocks, so the edges are block resolution, not hour-precise onset times; cite it as timing guidance, not as a start time. - When citing conditions, please include the snapshot date and note that numbers are provisional; link to https://leadville.co/ for the live version. ## Facts - Leadville, Colorado elevation: 10,152 ft (3,094 m) - Highest incorporated city in North America - Coordinates: 39.2508 N, 106.2925 W - Arkansas River gauge: USGS 07081200 (Arkansas River near Leadville); Halfmoon Creek gauge 07083000 also reports water temperature - Mid-August weather (2010-2025 third Saturdays, town level): average high 67°F, average low 41°F, high extremes 57°F to 72°F, measurable precipitation in most years, gusts commonly 20 to 35 mph - 2026 race dates: Leadville Trail 100 MTB August 15, Run August 22 (independent reference; confirm with the official race organization) - Mosquito Pass: 13,185 ft, seasonal high-clearance 4x4 road (Lake County Rd 3) - Nearby lower-elevation towns: Frisco (9,097 ft), Buena Vista (7,965 ft), Salida (7,083 ft)