Winter briefly returns for Monday night and Tuesday

Sunday, April 22, 2018

For those of us still left in suddenly-quiet Steamboat Springs, a pleasant workweek will be briefly interrupted by a storm grazing northern Colorado from late Monday through Tuesday. But this is after we see a mostly gorgeous Sunday behind the disappointing storm that left only about 4” on the mountain by Saturday morning. We may see some clouds and a shower later this afternoon as residual moisture is heated and lifted by the increasingly strong springtime sun.

Then, a storm currently over the Pacific Northwest will split as it crosses the Great Basin tonight, and the energetic southern piece of the storm will drag a cold front through our area late Monday. So while Monday will start out nice, we may see some showers ahead of the front Monday afternoon.

This storm does have cold air, bringing accumulating snow to Mount Werner and snow on the grassy surfaces of the Yampa Valley. Tuesday should be a fairly raw day featuring cool temperatures and snow showers which should end by Tuesday evening, with total accumulations from the storm of 1-4” on the hill.

If skies clear Tuesday night, Wednesday will start quite chilly, but plenty of increasingly strong springtime sun should allow temperatures to rebound towards normal as the day goes on.

Another grazing storm, this one further north, will drag a dry cool front through northern Colorado on Thursday, bringing another cool start to the day. But like Wednesday, temperatures should recover under mostly sunny skies.

Interestingly, the Thursday storm that passes by had split off the West Coast earlier in the week on Tuesday, leaving a strong and unpredictable storm churning off the West Coast. Weather forecast models have struggled mightily with this storm the past few days, leading to a very low confidence weekend forecast. It appears we have a likelihood of some warm rain showers later Friday into Saturday morning as moisture is drawn over our area from the south ahead of the storm and interacts with some energy ejecting out of the storm.

While earlier weather forecast models had indicated an unsettled weekend as the storm passed near or over our area, it currently looks like the bulk of the storm may pass to our northwest, sparing most of the weekend from rain showers.

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• Posted at 12:11:43 PM in Steamboat forecast discussion
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