Beautiful weekend with showers early and late next week
Thursday, October 20, 2016
A large storm off the West Coast has pumped up a ridge over the western U.S. promising a beautiful weekend with warm temperatures. Additional energy from the Aleutians moving southward this weekend will force the storm to dig southward along the coast, and increasing southwest flow ahead of the storm will direct some tropical and subtropical moisture over the Four Corners states on Monday and Tuesday. The end result will be an increasing chance of rain showers on Monday and early Tuesday for the Steamboat Springs area before drier weather returns as soon as Tuesday afternoon or evening.
There is a fair bit of uncertainty with the evolution of the West Coast storm, with the latest run of the models keeping most of it offshore through midweek, allowing the ridge of high pressure to rebound and bringing warm and sunny weather for Wednesday and Thursday.
If current model forecasts hold, the trough will elongate and undergo a modest split, with the southern portion making landfall around the end of the work week and directing another round of tropical and subtropical moisture across California and into the Great Basin. It is unclear whether this moisture and energy will be close enough to the Steamboat Springs area to threaten warm showers next weekend or whether the western ridge will be strong enough to deflect the weather to our north.