Quintessential Colorado weather for the work week
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Crystal clear blue skies and a temperature of seventy degrees are over the Steamboat Springs area this Sunday noon. After the weather excitement last week, the current spectacular late-summer weather will continue through the work week before we may see some sort of storm for next weekend.
A ridge of high pressure extending from the Intermountain West into British Columbia is sandwiched between a storm currently well off the West Coast and a vortex of cold air loosely centered over the Hudson Bay area. The storm off the West Coast is forecast to be pushed through the Great Basin during the weekend by an additional storm currently over the Bering Sea, but ahead of that we can expect the classic Colorado late-summer weather of sunny warm days and cool nights to continue through the work week.
High temperatures should run from about five to as much as ten degrees above our average high of 73 F under sunny skies. Lows should be several degrees below our average of 36 F under clear nights, with some frost possible in the low-lying areas.
A wave forecast to drop south from the higher latitudes is forecast to spin around the cold air vortex near Hudson Bay through midweek and may knock temperatures down a few degrees on Thursday if the storm is close enough to graze our area, though at this point almost all of the cold air looks like it will be confined to the Midwest and areas east.
That West Coast storm looks to begin affecting our area as soon as Friday with breezy southwest winds, which is not a good situation for our still-burning, but quieted, fires. Winds will increase further on Saturday as a weak cold front passes by, with rain showers possible from later Saturday through the night. Longer-range weather forecast models have the storm finished by Sunday with temperatures cooling to seasonable levels heading into the following work week, though disagree on whether there will be any moisture around.
Be sure to stay tuned to my regular Thursday afternoon weather narrative for more details on the possible weekend storm.
