The first weekend of fall in Colorado can be cool, muddy, and in some places snowy.

A low-pressure area of ​​moisture from the Gulf of California is developing over the southwest desert and moving toward the state, said David Barjenbruch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder.

If the storm maintains its course, the moist air will rise as it approaches the Colorado mountains. The result of that updraft, Barjenbruch said, could be heavy rain and snow in parts of the High Country Saturday and Sunday.

“It looks like there’s a decent chance of some significant precipitation,” he said. “It’s going to act like a winter storm. We’re definitely going to see some snow accumulation.”

The heaviest snow would likely fall on the eastern slopes of the Front Range. The rest of the Interstate 25 corridor and Eastern Plains would likely see rain, he said. That could simultaneously be a salve for drought-stricken regions of Colorado, make roads at higher elevations slippery and trigger dangerous flash floods and debris avalanches in wildfire burn scars, the service said.

Several inches of rain and snow could fall in some places, but Barjenbruch says the forecast is still uncertain and that this will likely continue until just before the storm hits.

The biggest unknowns are the amount of moisture in the Gulf, where the storm will hit and how quickly it will move — all factors that could mean the difference between missing out on much-needed moisture and devastating flooding from the heaviest rainfall in months.

“There are large potential ranges in terms of actual rainfall amounts,” he said.