Winter weather to briefly return ahead of a nice weekend
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Despite clouds building to our southwest ahead of an approaching winter storm, sunny skies are over Steamboat Springs this Thursday at noon, with temperatures in the low forties in town and mid-twenties near the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort. The storm will bring snow accumulations to all elevations from tonight through Friday, starting a mostly sunny weekend on a relatively cool note, especially after the record-high temperatures of the previous week.
Those records included tying the 52-degree high temperature mark set in 1940 last Friday, breaking the 52-degree record on Saturday with 55 degrees, and shattering the 56-degree record on Monday with 62 degrees, well above the 40-degree average and representative of early-May temperatures.
We’ve seen another couple of warm days behind the very disappointing storm that barely arrived last Tuesday, with another more promising storm on our doorstep. A trough of low pressure extending southwestward from Idaho across Utah to southern California will split on Friday, with the northern part of the split moving across Colorado during the day. A cold front associated with the storm’s leading edge begins snow showers at all elevations around mid-evening, becoming strongest between midnight and Friday morning.
We could see 3-6” of new snow for the Friday morning mid-mountain ski report, and that again during the day, with 1-4” of total accumulation in town, as the northern part of the split moves across northeastern Colorado. The southern part of the split is forecast to head toward Baja by Monday, leaving us in a col between the storm pieces, and interfering with the favorable northwest flow that normally occurs behind winter storms. While current forecasts have much of the snow over by sunset Friday, some showers may continue Friday night ahead of a relatively cold Saturday morning, with low temperatures around our average of 13 degrees in town, and around 5 degrees at the top of the hill.
High temperatures in town on Friday will finally fall below average, though only by a few degrees, before clouds clear on Saturday, bringing a mostly sunny afternoon with average high temperatures. As winds shift from the north to the west on a mostly sunny Sunday, bringing warmer air aloft, high temperatures rise back to the upper forties.
The following workweek is forecast to start warm and dry, with weather forecast models trending further north and weaker with possible grazing storms around Tuesday and Friday. So, as usual, hope for more snow than forecast on Friday, enjoy the nice weekend, and I’ll have more details on possible storm chances next week in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
