Dry cool front and more snow bookend nice Columbus Day weekend
Thursday, October 5, 2017
A dry cool front for Friday will precede a nice weekend ahead of another snow event on Columbus Day in Steamboat Springs. The rest of today will feature a brilliant fall day with warm temperatures and sunny skies.
They dry storm currently located in Nevada and discussed in Monday’s forecast will move across northern Colorado on Friday. Temperatures will fall from above average today to below average tomorrow, and there may be some afternoon showers as the atmosphere destabilizes.
After a cool start to Saturday, dry weather with mostly sunny skies and above average temperatures will grace our area through the weekend.
However, like the last storm, another storm that forms in the Gulf of Alaska during the weekend mixes with some cold air from western Canada and the polar region, and travels through the Great Basin on Monday. The southwest flow ahead of the storm will battle the cold air north of the storm, with dry, warm and possibly breezy conditions ahead of the cold front. Numerical weather models have struggled with the timing of this storm, but current forecasts bring the front through sometime on Monday. At this point it is uncertain during what part of the day the front arrives, so we may sneak in another nice day, or not.
The air will be quite cold, and it may be an all-snow event in the Yampa Valley that will extend through Monday night. Any precipitation that falls as rain should quickly change over to snow as temperatures plummet, and accumulations are again expected in the valley, with more significant accumulations at the higher elevations.
Clouds may linger on Tuesday as the storm moves east of our area, with another cool day expected. Cold morning temperatures behind the front will be experienced on Tuesday, and again Wednesday if skies clear Tuesday night.
As was the case this week, warmer and drier air washes over our area for most of the rest of the work week.
Lots of uncertainty emerges for next weekend as another storm forms in the Gulf of Alaska and splits as approaches the Pacific Northwest coast around the end of the work week. Numerical weather models disagree on the amount of splitting and whether the southern part of the split loiters offshore or moves inland, with one solution keeping us warm and dry and the other bringing at least unsettled weather into Great Basin and eventually our area for next weekend.
