Gorgeous weather lasts through the weekend
Thursday, April 1, 2021
Bluebird skies and temperatures of 40 F at the Bob Adams airport and 31 F near the top of Mt. Werner are over the Steamboat Springs area this Thursday noon. Warming temperatures and dry skies will extend through the weekend and into Monday before chances for cooler weather and precipitation appear during closing week of the Steamboat Ski Resort.
A ridge of high pressure is currently over the West ahead of a developing storm in the Gulf of Alaska. A piece of energy left behind from our disappointingly dry and windy storm on Tuesday is currently crossing the southern California coast and is forecast to travel along southern Arizona tomorrow and southern New Mexico on Saturday. We may see some clouds tonight ahead of the system, but otherwise sunny skies will dominate through Saturday with high temperatures today near our average of 48 F. More warming into the fifties is forecast for Friday, with sixties forecast for Saturday.
Weather forecast models are still struggling with the evolution of that Gulf of Alaska storm, with the consensus forecast now a compromise between the slower European ECMWF and faster American GFS as talked about in the last weather narrative. The current forecast now has the storm stretching to the southwest as it approaches the Pacific Northwest coast late in the weekend before it splits, with some of the storm forecast to be left behind off the West Coast and some moving inland.
There is still weather forecast model disagreement on how much energy is in the northern and southern parts of the split, but it appears we will not see cooler weather associated with the northern part of the split till around Tuesday. So ahead of that, expect more sixties for Easter Sunday and Monday, with some high clouds on Sunday as moisture ahead of the storm scoots across the Rockies.
There are snow chances for around Wednesday, though those will depend upon the eventual strength and track of the northern part of the storm. Enjoy the spectacular early spring weather through the weekend, and check back Sunday afternoon for my regularly scheduled weather narrative to see if we’ll see snow during closing week.
