Showers today ahead of a warm, sunny and possibly smokey weekend
Thursday, August 26, 2021
Temperatures in the upper seventies and a mix of clouds, sun and showers are over the Steamboat Springs late this Thursday afternoon. The chances for additional showers will persist through this evening before skies clear yielding warm and sunny weather for the weekend, along with the possibility that smoke from the California wildfires returns to our area
A quick moving storm currently over Utah has turned our winds to be from the south, allowing monsoonal moisture to overspread Colorado and bring showers to our area. The showers will end by around midnight as the storm passes through our area and will be followed by much drier air ahead of another storm currently crossing the Pacific Northwest coast.
That storm is forecast to be deflected to our north on Friday and Saturday by a strengthening ridge of high pressure centered over the Southeast, bringing breezy winds from mostly the west, sunny skies and warm temperatures five or more degrees above our average high of 78 F.
While the NOAA smoke plume model forecasts some smoke mostly to the north of our area on Friday, it currently has much higher smoke concentrations predicted for Saturday. While the model only forecasts out to two days, continued breezes from the generally west direction on Sunday may keep the smoke around under continued sunny skies and warm temperatures.
Meanwhile, there are two tropical storms that may develop into hurricanes this weekend, with Ida forecast to impact the western Gulf Coast and Nora forecast to impact the Baja peninsula. While Ida will not affect our weather, there may be a chance we will see either some moisture from Nora or even the remnants of the storm itself in about a week.
Stay tuned to my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon where I’ll discuss the continued warm and dry conditions to start the work week and the possibility for increasing moisture to welcome the month of September.
