The Spring Break ends Tuesday

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Temperatures in the Steamboat Springs area range from the low forties near the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort and high forties in town under mostly sunny skies this Sunday noon. We may see temperatures in town breaching the sixty degree mark today as our spring weather break continues, and almost that on Monday before temperatures plummet as a complex storm brings wintry weather back to our area for the rest of the work week.

A large storm that passed through the Gulf of Alaska last night has split, with the majority of the storm diving south and forming an eddy just now off the coast of California. The storm is forecast to move across California on Monday and begin affecting our area by Monday night with rain showers at the lower elevations and snow showers at the higher elevations. It looks like we will sneak in another springtime day on Monday ahead of the storm, but after seeing high temperatures fifteen to twenty degrees above our average of 46 F, high temperature five to ten degrees below average starting on Tuesday and lasting through the work week will be a shock.

We may see an inch or two of accumulations at mid-mountain by the Tuesday morning ski report, but snows should pick up during the day and overnight as some of the northern part of the storm re-integrates with the southern portion of the storm and brings cool, moist and unstable flow from our favorable northwest direction. And while all snow is expected at mid-mountain, town may see liquid precipitation during the day Tuesday before snowflakes appear overnight. We could see another 3-6” at mid-mountain by the Wednesday morning report.

Wednesday should be another cool and showery day with peeks of sun, with an additional 1-4” of snowfall at mid-mountain that would be reported on Thursday morning. We may see some partial clearing on Thursday before the next storm that is forecast to cross the Vancouver coast on Wednesday brings another round of snowfall from Thursday afternoon through the night and into some of Friday.

Enjoy the last couple of warm and springlike days ahead of the return of wintry weather on Tuesday, and I’ll be back with my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon to discuss how much snow we may see out of the Thursday night storm and the possibility of an additional storm sometime during the following weekend or soon after.