Unsettled weather continues this week and likely next week as well
Sunday, April 27, 2014
The Steamboat powdercam is showing about 5.5” up top this afternoon with a temperature of 19F, though I had only trace amounts of snow on my deck this morning as the precipitation fell mostly as rain last night. Even though this impressive spring storm is east of us, we will continue to be affected by this storm this entire week as its eastward motion is impeded by additional waves of energy and cold air from the persistent Hudson Bay vortex digging into its western flank. Indeed, the eastern two thirds of the country will soon be affected by this enormous storm.
For our area, a trailing wave from the Pacific northwest will bring another round of showers and cooler temperatures during the day tomorrow and tomorrow night. Snows will continue to accumulate at higher elevations on the hill though the valley precipitation will be either rain or non-accumulating snowfall.
Showers lessen on Tuesday, though they don’t end, and will pick up again Wednesday as a wave rotating around the west side of the Hudson Bay vortex brings another round of cool air and showers. Earlier model runs had the west coast ridge building over us by Wednesday, but the cold air moving southward from Canada will prevent this from happening. In fact, further surges of cold air are now advertised for Thursday and Friday as well, keeping the west coast ridge to our west and showers over our area.
Concurrently, a Pacific storm approaches the coast around the end of the workweek, interacting with and destroying the west coast ridge. There is model uncertainty during the weekend with regards to how much interaction there is between this Pacific storm and energy along the western flank of the Hudson Bay vortex, though both the American and European model keep unsettled weather over our area. The European ECMWF model has more cool air entering the Pacific storm, which may allow temperatures to warm briefly ahead of the storm during next weekend, while the American GFS keeps this storm weaker, but forecasts cool and unsettled conditions in the moist northwest flow through the weekend.
Even though details are likely to change, unsettled weather continues to be forecast into the following week, as the earlier advertised active spring weather continues into the foreseeable future.
