I’ve used this term quite a bit over the last couple of weeks in my forecasts so I thought I’d give you a little explainer on gap wind or gap-flow wind.
La Veta Pass is a low spot along the Sangre de Cristo range so it’s easier for the air hitting this granite wall from the west to squeeze through in the gap. The building up of mass on the west side of the mountains and the relative lower pressure on the east side the air is constricted in the low spots it creates an an enhanced area of lower pressure as the speed increases. As air moves through a gap from high to low pressure, its speed increases while pressure decreases, aligning with Bernoulli’s principle. There are a couple of things happening here though because the “funneling” effect where narrowing terrain forces air to speed up also has some relation to the Venturi effect, too.
Here’s why it matters. The low-spots accelerate wind down the eastern slopes down stream of the passes or lower spots. This is what happens from La Veta Pass to Walsenburg. Here’s a really good real-world example from Sunday, March 8th, 2026.
It’s the same principle coming out of Big Horn Canyon on the Arkansas River in Fremont County. This low area also produces gap flow wind which helps the area to be known as southern Colorado’s “banana belt” temperatures overnight from Salida through the canyon to the Cañon City area are often some of the warmest temps. Sometimes this wind will curl around the southern slopes of Pikes Peak into Fort Carson and southern El Paso County. This wind can also locally enhance speeds east through Pueblo West and Pueblo.
