Temperatures moderate for the weekend before turning hot again early next week
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Some cooler air will wash over the Steamboat Springs area starting early Friday and extending through the weekend, and possibly again around mid-next week. For the rest of today, similar to yesterday, there may be a chance of a mostly windy afternoon storm. The locally strong and gusty winds around these storms are caused by evaporating precipitation (virga) which cools the air before it reaches the ground. This cooler air creates strong downdrafts which then spread out horizontally when colliding with the surface.
For Friday and Saturday, a couple of waves moving southward along the western flank of a storm in the southern Canadian Plains will introduce cooler air over our area, knocking temperatures back towards the normal range and making for some very pleasant early summer days. These cool fronts will be dry, and with less moisture predicted to be in the atmosphere as compared to the last few days, precipitation chances will be close to nil.
Temperature will warm a bit Sunday, but the warming will occur in earnest on Monday and Tuesday as a transient ridge brings hot temperatures over the western states. We may have a slightly better chance of afternoon storms then as some energy from a tropical wave interacts with energy from a storm in the Gulf of Alaska and moves over our area later Monday and Tuesday.
By Wednesday, significant differences appear in the numerical forecast models, with the American GFS having the Gulf of Alaska storm mixing with some cool western Canadian air before digging it into the Great Basin. This forecast is a change from the last few days and would bring a series of cool fronts through the area for the end of the next work week. The more consistent European ECMWF, however, keeps this storm further north and faster moving which leaves most of the cool air north of our area.
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