Next best chance of showers Saturday
Thursday, July 25, 2019
The Steamboat Springs area is currently experiencing a relatively rare humid Thursday morning, as temperatures in the lower seventies combine with a locally high relative humidity (RH) of 50%. After a chance of afternoon and evening storms tonight and Friday, we’ll see a good chance for wetting rains on Saturday before several days of drier weather are forecast to last through the early part of next week. Moisture then returns around midweek for more precipitation chances.
A 50% RH may not sound high, compared to the seventies and eighties experienced along the Eastern Seaboard this past weekend, but it sure feels humid compared to yesterday when RH was in the low-thirties this time of day. Low-level dry air filtering in from Wyoming this afternoon will help dry the air mass, but there will still be a chance of afternoon and evening storms today and Friday.
A high chance of showers exist for most of Saturday as a monsoonal disturbance currently traveling north across southern California makes its way along the western periphery of ridge of high pressure located over the Desert Southwest. The disturbance will be forced eastward across the Great Basin on Friday, thanks to a storm near Vancouver that crosses the coast early in the weekend, and moves over our area during the day Saturday.
Showers on Saturday could start early in the day, perhaps before noon, before becoming heavier in the afternoon and evening. While afternoon temperatures remain below average due to the clouds, humidity will once again climb leading to periods of localized moderate to heavy rain for those areas fortunate enough to be under a slow-moving storm cell.
Much drier air is forecast to wash over our area starting Sunday behind both the monsoon disturbance and the Vancouver storm racing eastward across the southern Canadian Plains. We should see plenty of sun with temperatures near or slightly above our average of 82 F that last through the early work week.
The ridge of high pressure is forecast to drift eastward from the Desert Southwest to the southern and central Rockies through Monday, and the southerly flow along the western periphery of the ridge will once again draw moisture northward. So afternoon and evening shower chances reappear starting Tuesday and last through the work week, with chances increasing for the following weekend as a more robust surge of monsoonal moisture is advertised by some weather forecast models.
