Beautiful start to the week before warm moisture returns around midweek and the weekend

Monday, September 26, 2016

A building western ridge will keep warming temperatures and sunny skies with cool nights around through tomorrow and some of Wednesday.

Part of this past weekend’s storm that broke southwestward from the parent circulation is currently spinning near Baja and will be joined by a tropical disturbance moving northward. Meanwhile, additional cold air from the northern latitudes will strengthen a Gulf of Alaska storm and move it southward by midweek.

Southwest flow ahead of the Pacific storm will shear the Baja disturbances into a series of waves that will move northeastward, increasing moisture over our area later Wednesday and leading to the possibility of showers as early as later Wednesday and lasting through Friday.

Following closely on the heels of these Baja disturbances, additional energy starts to eject from the Gulf of Alaska storm that is forecast to be off the Pacific Northwest coast by Friday. This energy will move over the area in continued warm southwest flow, threatening continued showers in warm temperatures through the weekend.

By late in the weekend, numerical guidance has upstream Pacific energy undercutting a rapidly building ridge behind Pacific Northwest storm which forces the storm eastward. Some sort of cool front is forecast to pass through the Steamboat Springs area early in the next work week, followed by cool and unsettled weather as the storm slowly moves across the Great Basin.