Snow chances for Tuesday through Thursday
Sunday, January 19, 2020
A cool and mostly cloudy Sunday morning in Steamboat Springs should give way to more sun this afternoon and temperatures warming in town to around our average high of 27 F. Though Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be the sunniest and warmest of the long holiday weekend, a couple of storms will bring the chances for snow from Tuesday through possibly Thursday before the weather turns nicer for next weekend.
Currently, a ridge of high pressure over the West Coast is moving eastward thanks to some incoming Pacific energy and moisture. The ridge is forecast to move over our area on Monday, allowing for plenty of sun and warming temperatures.
The first of the two Pacific storms moving over our area will be relatively weak and warm, and should start light snow showers in the Steamboat Springs area on Tuesday. Even at this close range, there is weather forecast model disagreement on the amount of snow for the the Wednesday morning report, but 2-5” is a reasonable guess at this time.
It looks like there won’t be any break between the two weather systems, with the second one keeping snow showers going during the day Wednesday. This one will cross the Pacific Northwest coast on Tuesday and contain colder air originally sourced from Siberia. But as you may expect with the model disagreement on Tuesday, there is even more on Wednesday, as the European ECMWF keeps the storm more consolidated and moves it east of our area by early Thursday as compared to the American GFS, which moves the storm more slowly and has additional energy keeping favorable moist northwest flow over our area through Thursday.
There are enough differences that I will commit to moving my usual Thursday weather narrative to Wednesday in the hopes of gaining clarity on the eventual speed and strength of the storm. We could see as little as 1-4” by Thursday morning if the European model verifies, or as much as 4-8” by Thursday morning with an additional 1-4” during the day if the more optimistic American GFS verifies.
Remarkably, weather forecast models agree on a building ridge of high pressure for Friday and the weekend. Though the temperature forecast is uncertain, as the American GFS keeps much colder temperatures around longer as compared to the European ECMWF, we should see plenty of sun through next weekend.
Another Pacific storm is forecast to approach the West Coast late next weekend or early the following week, with the European ECMWF stronger and more consolidated than the weaker and more disorganized American GFS. We may see some effects from this storm by around the following Tuesday.
