Summery weather week ahead
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Sunny skies and and temperatures in the upper seventies are observed in Steamboat Springs on this Thursday mid-afternoon. More summery weather is on tap for the upcoming week, and while today will be dry, most of the following days will have chances for at least afternoon showers.
The week of summery weather ahead is courtesy of a large ridge of high pressure currently sitting over the West and extending into eastern Alaska. A storm has become cutoff from the jet stream and is currently spinning off the northern Baja coast. This storm will be displaced tomorrow by a lobe of energy breaking away from a large and cold storm in the Gulf of Alaska, forcing the Baja storm to travel north along the west side of the western ridge of high pressure.
While almost all of the storm will be deflected well west of our area, leaving our temperatures mostly unaffected and ten to fifteen degrees above our average high of 66 F, the southerly flow associated with the storm will bring moisture to our south northward. So we should see a chance of afternoon storms for Friday and Saturday.
A piece of energy is forecast to break away from the storm and move over our area Saturday night, perhaps keeping showers going into Sunday morning.
Drier air briefly invades our area from the Desert Southwest on Sunday for another warm day that is currently looking dry.
Meanwhile, the lobe of energy from the Gulf of Alaska storm, after spinning off the West Coast for a couple of days, is forecast to approach the coast and make landfall around midweek. Southerly flow ahead of the storm will once again bring moisture from our south northward, increasing our shower chances again starting Monday afternoon.
And similar to this weekend, pieces of energy ejecting from the storm will wander over our area at times, bringing better chances of heavier and more widespread rain showers for the work week. There is some uncertainty with respect to the track of the storm and how quickly it moves inland, but right now it looks to affect us with more than a grazing blow sometime around the end of the work week or the following weekend. Stay tuned for my Sunday afternoon weather narrative for an update on this possibly wet storm.
