Quintessential Colorado late summer weather on tap
Thursday, August 24, 2017
A building ridge of high pressure over the western states will dominate the weather in Steamboat Springs this week. Ahead of the ridge, a storm that has just crossed the west coast near Vancouver, British Columbia will travel eastward across this northern U.S. border early this weekend with little impact on our sensible weather.
Current cloudiness is caused by the remnant low pressure area over California that threatened, but did not impact, Monday’s eclipse viewing for northern Colorado (check out my account of the remarkable spectacle). Some remaining pieces of the storm are moving over our area today, but it looks like the threat of storms will stay mostly to our south for the rest of the afternoon.
While there will be some ridging tomorrow, the western ridge builds in earnest behind the eastward moving Vancouver storm on Saturday. Much drier air will contribute to warm to hot days and cool nights that are typical for late summer in Colorado.
Around midweek, some energy from the Pacific moves inland as it battles the dominant western ridge. There is uncertainty with respect to the evolution of this battle, but some increasing moisture is likely, leading to the chance of storms by midweek and lasting for a few days. At this point, anything more than possibly brief heavy rain looks unlikely before the western ridge is advertised to rebuild for the following weekend.
