Pleasant weekend ahead
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Temperatures are near 60 degrees with a mix of sun and clouds on a breezy Thursday mid-afternoon in Steamboat Springs. After a cool and wet start to the workweek, which left significant and very welcome precipitation at all elevations, a chance of showers later today will be followed this weekend by mostly sunny skies and temperatures warming to the mid- to upper-sixties. Even warmer, record-challenging temperatures are forecast for next week.
Steamboat Springs is drying out after receiving 1.5” of rainfall in town on Monday night and Tuesday, with the 16” of snow near the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort, shown in the accompanying time-lapse from 1 am - 7 pm Tuesday, containing nearly twice that.
The storm, a product of a West Coast eddy moving inland and interacting with cold air from western Canada moving southward, was more productive than advertised, as the stationary front produced intense storm cells, the strongest of which left 3.5” of snow in a single hour between 9 am and 10 am Tuesday!
That’s the second double-digit snowfall the ski area received since closing early on 5 April, and the third in the last month. As impressive as that sounds, it has only increased the water content in the remaining snowpack to just above the lowest amount recorded in the Yampa-White-Little Snake drainage basin in the last 30 years, as shown in the accompanying chart.
Now, a ridge of high pressure over the West Coast is sandwiched between a storm extending south of the Aleutian Islands and a deep vortex of cold air still extending south from Hudson Bay. Energy from the Aleutian storm moving over the top of the ridge and down its eastern side will graze our area later today, bringing a chance of showers through this evening.
Any leftover clouds should clear by Friday morning, bringing mostly sunny skies and temperatures warming into the mid-to-upper sixties, above our average of 63 degrees.
Another wave overtopping the ridge may increase clouds by Saturday afternoon after a mostly sunny morning, with the clouds dissipating by Sunday morning for a mostly sunny Mother’s Day. High temperatures will be similar all three days before the ridge moves eastward, bringing mid-seventies on Monday and possibly around 80 degrees by Tuesday, possibly challenging the record of 81 degres set in 1894.
Enjoy your Mother’s Day weekend, and I’ll have more details on how hot it may be next week in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
