Steamboat Springs area short term weather forecast from Monday night
Monday, March 21, 2016
A Pacific storm crossing the West Coast will cause clouds to increase and lower overnight. Rain showers in the valleys and snow showers on the hill are currently timed to begin around Tuesday mid-morning as waves of energy begin to be ejected from the storm in breezy southwest flow.
The cold front is currently forecast to cross the area around Tuesday afternoon or evening bringing a burst of heavy snowfall down to the valley bottoms and making travel difficult. Light to moderate snows will follow behind the front in cooler and wet mostly northwesterly to northerly flow and last through noon or so on Wednesday. Furthermore, as the storm crosses the Rockies and intensifies to our east, there is a possibility of a TROWAL forming behind the storm which may produce another round of Steamboat Magic for Wednesday morning.
There is model uncertainty with respect to the timing of the front and the intensity of snowfall behind it, but current forecasts may have as much as 8-16” between Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons on the mountain, 1-4” near Craig and 3-6” near Steamboat.
Snow showers will likely stick around from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday in cool and moist northwest flow before another Pacific storm in still favorable northwest flow approaches the area for Friday and Saturday.