Meager rain chances and hot temperatures for the upcoming week
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the upper seventies are over Steamboat Springs early this Thursday afternoon. The weather forecast for the upcoming week is persistent with mostly sunny skies, daytime temperatures in the eighties and nighttime temperatures in the forties. Only meager chances for precipitation exist for the high country, and even there the storms will likely produce more wind than rain.
A ridge of high pressure over the Inter-mountain West is currently sandwiched between elongated areas of low pressure in the Gulf of Alaska and the Midwest. Storms from the Gulf of Alaska will periodically travel over the ridge of high pressure and down its eastern side, confining the interesting weather to the eastern side of the Continental Divide.
The storms will be close enough to our area, however, to produce breezy afternoon and early evening conditions at times through the weekend. Additionally, there will be a small chance of some high elevation showers, but these would likely produce more wind than rain as most of the precipitation will evaporate in the very dry atmosphere before reaching the ground.
Other than that, expect hot temperatures with highs around five degrees above our average of 82 F and comfortably cool nights with lows within about five degrees of our average of 46 F. Incidentally, I now see the first decline in our average daily temperature this season, available on the SnowAlarm home page under the Local Temperatures, Winds & Precipitation heading, indicting the average hottest part of the summer is behind us.
By early in the work week, one of the storms from the Gulf of Alaska will be strong enough to deform the ridge of high pressure, bringing more dry air and breezy westerly winds by Tuesday, along with the elimination of the small shower chances over the high country for several days.
The ridge of high pressure then rebounds over our area before being pushed to our east, with the location of the ridge determining whether we see the return of some monsoonal moisture. As of now, there is some loose agreement among the weather forecast models that we will have a chance of showers returning just before or during the following weekend.
I’ll know more about this possibility by the time my next regularly scheduled weather narrative is penned on Sunday afternoon.
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