Warm and sunny weather returns after a cold start to the week
Sunday, November 11, 2018
The light snow falling in Steamboat Springs this Sunday won’t accumulate to much, but a reinforcing surge of cold and dry air tonight means a cold start to the work week before warmer and sunnier weather returns.
Currently, a large trough of cold air sits over much of the United States, save for a ridge of high pressure over the West Coast, where hot and dry weather and the seasonal easterly Santa Anna winds have fueled extreme wildfire behavior in California. This weather pattern will bring a cold front through Colorado later today with another windy day in California before incoming Pacific energy forces the ridge of high pressure eastward.
The cold front means a quite cold Monday with both low and high temperature around twenty degrees below our average low of 18 F and average high of 46 F, despite the presence of sun. A clear Monday night will once again keep similar low temperatures around for Tuesday morning before the flattening ridge of high pressure moves towards our area, with some warming at low elevations during the day but more at higher elevations.
Continued sun and warmer temperatures with both highs and lows around average are advertised for Wednesday before some energy traveling over the top of the ridge mixes with some cold air from the Canadian Plains and clips northern Colorado on Thursday. This probably will not affect temperatures much, but we may see some clouds and breezy northwest winds.
The ridge briefly rebounds over the west for Friday before we are similarly clipped again by a passing storm for Saturday. And again, the ridge briefly rebounds for Sunday for more nice weather.
Meanwhile, another round of incoming Pacific energy approaches the West Coast mid-weekend and the interaction of this energy and the ridge of high pressure is uncertain. Weather forecast models indicate that some energy is likely to penetrate inland and move across the Great Basin early in the next work week, though any storms carried along look to be relatively warm and weak heading into Thanksgiving.
