Quiet weather for the upcoming week
Thursday, November 7, 2019
The sunny skies and seasonably warm temperatures observed in Steamboat Springs this week will continue for the upcoming week, save for a couple of grazing storms that will bring clouds and cooler temperatures for Monday and later Wednesday.
The benign weather is due to a large and stable ridge of high pressure over the West Coast which extends across Alaska and into Siberia. An incoming Pacific storm will travel through the West Coast ridge this weekend and mix with some cold air from the Canadian Plains as it sinks toward the Midwest, grazing our area late Sunday or early Monday and briefly interrupting the current gorgeous late-fall weather.
The Rocky Mountains will divert moisture and most of the cold air to the Front Range and areas east, but we will see some clouds and a cool down on Veterans Day from the recent five to ten degrees above our average of 47 F to five to ten degrees below. There will also be a small chance of some high elevations snow showers.
While the sun should return on Tuesday, temperatures will increase toward average even as the morning starts chilly.
Another grazing storm is forecast for later Wednesday, and though it won’t be as cold, the storm track may be slightly further to the west. Again, there will be increasing clouds and only a slight chance of snow showers at the higher elevations before the sun returns for more dry and seasonably warm weather for the rest of the work week and headed into the weekend. So the Steamboat Ski Resort’s just-announced and earliest ever Opening Day on that Friday is currently forecast to be a nice one.
Longer-term models agree on another storm crossing the West Coast around the following weekend, but disagree on the storm track, with the more consistent ECMWF forecasting another grazing storm and the more mercurial-this-season American GFS forecasting some type of splitting storm that may bring some weather into the West.
