Steamboat Springs area weather forecast from Saturday

Saturday, May 7, 2016

The expansive Great Basin storm has currently elongated to the northeast and southwest, extending from southern California to northeastern Colorado. The slot of dry air indicated in yesterday’s forecast did move over our area before sunrise, but moved just far enough east to give way to the observed thunderstorms with hail this morning. As of this afternoon, about 4” of snow has fallen near the top of Mount Werner as shown by the Steamboat Powdercam.

The forecast has a band of showers either over our area or just north of our area overnight into tomorrow morning. While we just missed some sun this morning, there is a small chance that we may be just south of the precipitation early in the day, possibly allowing for some sun for Mother’s Day morning. Showers will reform or continue in the unsettled weather for the afternoon, with snows continuing on the hill for another 2-5” above 9000′ or so between this afternoon and Sunday afternoon.

By Monday, the storm will be east of us, though we will still be susceptible to showers during the day as energy rotates around the backside of the low.

A colder storm from the Pacific Northwest is forecast to quickly follow this storm after a brief break during Monday night into Tuesday morning. This will bring a moderately strong cold front through the area around midday Tuesday, with the possibility of some snowflakes down to the valley bottoms by Tuesday evening. However, moisture is sparse and quickly erodes behind the front, precluding accumulations on the valley floors and limiting snows on the hill. Furthermore, the NAM model has a bit of a split in the storm which keeps most of the precipitation north and south of our area, though the AVN and some global models keep the storm more intact with more precipitation over our area.

Nonetheless, the quick clearing behind the storm should bring a cool but mostly sunny Wednesday followed by warming and at least a dry Thursday to close out the work week.