More spectacular fall weather for the upcoming week
Thursday, October 1, 2020
The Steamboat Springs area is seeing a comfortable temperature of 65 F under sunny skies early this Thursday afternoon. There is not really any change to the weather for the upcoming week, with sunny days and cool nights in our future. However a couple of disturbances are forecast to graze our area on Saturday and Monday leading to some breezy conditions that may increase wildfire activity.
In fact, we saw some smoke this morning for the first time in a couple of days from the close-by Middle Fork Fire that was well forecast by the NOAA smoke plume model, and that model has the smoke continuing to clear through the day. The model is run once per day overnight and provides a 42 hour forecast of smoke over the nation as well as a close-up view of Colorado.
Our current spell of beautiful weather is courtesy of a ridge of high pressure over the West Coast that is separating the cold and stormy weather over the Gulf of Alaska and the eastern half of the country. A disturbance will move down the eastern side of the ridge and graze our area on Friday and Saturday, with breezy winds the main result.
Though winds will subside on Sunday, they will pick up again on Monday as some energy rotates through the Gulf of Alaska and temporarily flattens the ridge of high pressure. But temperatures look to be largely unaffected by these passing disturbances, so expect mostly sunny skies through the upcoming week with high temperatures within several degrees of seventy, a bit above our average high of 65 F and low temperatures in the twenties, a bit below our average low of 30 F.
There may be some hope of a pattern change around the following weekend or soon after as ridges of high pressure over the West Coast and the Scandinavian countries conspire to shift the cold air currently over the North Pole and Hudson Bay into western Siberia and the north Pacific. So enjoy the beautiful fall weather now, and I should know more about that pattern change possibility by my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
