Showers to continue through Tuesday ahead of a midweek break
Sunday, April 26, 2026
A round of rain showers is passing through Steamboat Springs early this Sunday afternoon, just after temperatures reached 50 degrees, with snow showers at and above mid-mountain at the Steamboat Ski Resort. The unsettled weather will continue through Tuesday, leaving significant precipitation ahead of a Wednesday break. More showers are forecast for Thursday, with another break advertised for Friday and lasting into next weekend.
After waiting all winter, a trough of low pressure extending from the Canadian Plains to southern California is downstream of a ridge of high pressure over the Gulf of Alaska. Waves of energy moving across the northern Pacific have traveled over the top of the ridge, ingesting cool air from western Canada as they move down the backside of the trough.
Two strong waves will move through our area through Tuesday, with the first wave now in southern Utah forecast to move across Colorado tonight. Rain showers will continue through tonight, with snow levels dropping to around 7,500′; low enough to see some snowflakes in town by Monday morning.
The second wave, now moving through northern California, will round the base of the trough Monday night, allowing showers to continue on Monday as it approaches our area. Snow levels will rise during the day before falling to around 7,000′ by Tuesday morning behind the wave, perhaps leaving some minor snowfall accumulations in town.
A weaker third wave will move through later Tuesday, keeping showers around through the day before at least a short break on Wednesday. We could see around a foot of snow at high elevations by Tuesday night, with around three-quarters of an inch of rain in town.
By later Wednesday, the northern part of the trough is forecast to rotate into Ontario, even as additional energy moving over the top of the Gulf of Alaska ridge keeps the southern end of the trough anchored over the West. However, this next piece of energy splits as it moves across Idaho on Wednesday night, with the southern end moving across Nevada on Thursday and the northern end bringing another round of showers later Wednesday and Thursday.
Weather forecast models agree that some of the splitting energy to our west will interact with an eddy of low pressure off the southern California coast, eventually moving across the Desert Southwest on Friday. However, they disagree on the northern extent of the weather, with the American GFS keeping the storm farther south and our area shower-free for Friday, and the European ECMWF farther north.
Next weekend is looking far less active, but only briefly, as an incoming Pacific storm looks to bring unsettled weather back into our area by late in the weekend or early the following workweek. So welcome the moisture to start the workweek, and I’ll have more details about the weekend in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
