Clearing and warming for the next week starts Wednesday except for a small storm Friday night
Monday, November 6, 2017
A leftover part of the current storm currently spinning in Idaho will keep the cool and unsettled weather going through Tuesday in the Steamboat Springs area, before warming and drying is advertised for the next week, save for a small storm forecast for Friday night.
Showers will pick up again this afternoon and last through mid-evening before they slowly taper off over the next 24 hours or so. The Idaho part of the storm will travel to the southeast and be over Colorado Tuesday night with minimal additional precipitation and colder temperatures.
If skies clear later Tuesday night, Wednesday morning will be quite chilly, but a dry airmass settles over the area, bringing sunny skies and warming temperatures. The warming may be moderated on Thursday by a grazing storm well to our northeast, but will continue on Friday.
Clouds will be on the increase during the day Friday as a weakening storm crosses the West Coast and brings some light snow showers to northern Colorado by Friday night. Light accumulations at the higher elevations are possible, but the storm should be past by noon on Saturday with dry weather and warming temperatures returning for later in the day.
A beautiful Sunday is currently forecast by the numerical weather models, with clouds on the increase on Monday as another weak storm approaches the area, bringing some showers to northern Colorado on Tuesday.
Since the Steamboat Ski Area is scheduled to open in only two weeks from Wednesday, I’m sure there is a lot of interest in the longer term forecast. The American GFS forecasts out to 16 days, though precision usually quickly decays by around day 10. However, in the interest of providing fodder to those eager to consume it, I will note that an active pattern looks to begin several days before opening. Both the European ECMWF and the American GFS build ridges of high pressure over the Bering sea and the Greenland area, and this allows energy and cold air rotating around a low pressure center over Hudson Bay to cross the North Pole and travel across Alaska. At this point, it looks like this will phase with Pacific energy and form a strong storm in the Gulf of Alaska, continuing the wet and cold weather for the Pacific Northwest. Eventually, at least the last two iterations of the American GFS bring some of that energy across the Rocky Mountains the weekend before opening in the form of cold and snow.
