After a pleasant Saturday, Durango and surrounding areas awoke Sunday morning to grumbling skies and rain.

The first Farmers Market of the season was sun-drenched and bright Saturday, but by mid-morning Sunday, cars splashed through puddles, making small rooster tails on blocks of Main Avenue. Reports of a brilliant rainbows were accompanied by cracking thunder and a few strikes of lightning.

Seventy-two miles east, Wolf Creek Pass was loaded with a foot of snow, and the San Juan Mountains north of Durango received as much as 10 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

“We had a storm that developed and intensified from the Pacific Northwest, and it settled over eastern Utah and Colorado,” John Kyle, data-acquisition program manager with the weather service, said Sunday. “It’s a big, strong system for this time of year.”

Kyle said the rainy and, at times, snowy weather will be pulling out of Colorado on Tuesday, but the weather service was calling for a 30 percent chance of rain or snow today and tonight, with a low of 26. So, depending on where you live, you could be brushing off your windshield and covering your flower garden, or just grabbing an umbrella. But keep your flip-flops by the door. The sun is coming back.

“We will have a cool northwest flow behind that mid-week, but there is a ridge of high pressure over California that’s going to be slowly working its way over Colorado, and we’ll go from around 50 to highs in the 60s on Wednesday and Thursday and into the lower 70s on Friday,” Kyle said.

The storm hit harder up north – bringing cold temperatures and a sloppy mix of rain and snow to parts of northern Colorado and Wyoming on Mother’s Day.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for most of northern Colorado and parts of southern Wyoming for all day Sunday and for this morning.

Snow amounts along the Front Range and north-central Colorado could vary greatly, but up to 15 inches could fall at higher elevations, and 4 to 9 inches could fall at lower elevations, including Denver and other cities along the Front Range.

“If we see the total accumulations that we are anticipating from this storm, we are certainly going to see a top-10 May snow event for the Denver metro area,” said David Barjenbruch, a weather service meteorologist in Boulder.

Barjenbruch said a foot of snow had already fallen in the foothills of Larimer County northwest of Denver by Sunday morning, and workers along much of the Front Range can expect a “slushy, sloppy morning commute” today.

The weather service also warned that snow could be heavy and wet enough to snap tree limbs and power lines, causing power failures. Winds gusting up to 30 mph could reduce visibility, and slushy roads could be treacherous to drive.

Julie Smith, a spokeswoman for Denver International Airport, said passengers might spend a little more time on the tarmac as crews de-ice planes, but no major airline delays have been reported. Meanwhile, Denver officials plan to deploy up to 70 snowplows overnight to prepare for the morning commute.

In southern Wyoming, the storm forced transportation officials to close a 150-mile stretch of Interstate 80.

bmathis@durangoherald.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.