Summery weather is back
Thursday, June 11, 2020
The Steamboat Springs area is seeing a beautiful June day with sunny skies and a noontime temperature of 67 F on this Thursday. Tomorrow looks to be the warmest day of the week before a strong storm from the Gulf of Alaska grazes our area mid-weekend, with Saturday afternoon and evening showers that may produce more wind than rain. Temperature will return to average behind the grazing storm for the rest of the upcoming week, along with windy to breezy flow from the southwest.
The southern part of a large and cold storm currently extending from the Gulf of Alaska to off the coast of California is forecast to make landfall on Friday. A ridge of high pressure over the West is forecast to amplify ahead of the storm on Friday, bringing our warmest temperatures of the upcoming week that will be ten degrees or so above our average high of 72 F.
While most of the precipitation and cold air will be confined to the Pacific Northwest over the weekend, there will be a chance of showers over our area Saturday afternoon and evening as the southerly winds ahead of the storm carries moisture originally from the Gulf of Mexico northward. However, the lower levels of the atmosphere are forecast to remain dry, so look for these showers to possibly produce more wind than rain as the precipitation evaporates before reaching the ground (virga).
While clouds will moderate the high temperatures on Saturday to be in the seventies, a weak cool front grazing our area Saturday night will keep them there on a dry, sunny and breezy Sunday.
The breezy winds from the southwest are expected to persist through the work week in the dry air behind the storm and ahead of another Pacific Northwest storm later in the week.
There is weather forecast model uncertainty with respect to the strength of this next Pacific Northwest storm, with the American GFS being stronger and the European ECMWF trending weaker. While we may see another round of breezy southwesterly winds if the storm ends up being on the stronger side, both models agree currently agree on the following weekend staying dry.
