Warming temperatures with continued wind through midweek
Sunday, May 8, 2022
The Steamboat Springs area is seeing temperatures around sixty degrees under partly sunny skies with breezy winds from the west early this Sunday afternoon. A grazing cool front will knock temperatures back about ten degrees or so on Monday along with chances for showers tonight and early morning. But winds will turn to be from the southwest starting on Tuesday as sunny skies and warming temperatures persist through midweek ahead of a broad storm system to our west. The weather then turns unsettled by Thursday and lasts into the weekend as parts of that storm system pass nearby or overhead.
The eastward progress of a broad and cold storm system currently extending from the Aleutian Islands to the Dakotas is being blocked by a ridge of high pressure over the Mississippi Valley. Some energy ejecting out of that storm system brought a grazing cool front through our area yesterday afternoon which produced almost six inches of snow near the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort and almost a half inch of rain in the Yampa Valley by this morning.
Our wind speeds are forecast to stay elevated for much of the next week as the storm to our west reluctantly moves eastward. Another grazing cool front is forecast for tonight, and while there may be some snow showers at the higher elevations and rain showers down low, possibly mixed with snowflakes, it’s main effect will be to lower high temperatures to around ten degrees below our average of 61 F on Monday.
The storm system is first forecast to deepen along the West Coast through midweek before some cold air sourced from Siberia eventually gets pieces of the storm system moving eastward. The southwesterly winds ahead of the storm will keep dry and warm air from the Desert Southwest moving overhead on Tuesday and Wednesday, so look for mostly sunny skies and high temperatures warming into the sixties on Tuesday and possible the seventies by Wednesday, which will be the warmest day of the week.
Also by Wednesday, that cold air from Siberia will be moving across the Gulf of Alaska and is forecast to move some of the western storm eastward, bringing an initially dry cool front through our area on Thursday. There may be enough moisture for some showers by Thursday afternoon or overnight, though weather forecast models have trended less optimistic with those chances over the last few days.
The Siberian part of the storm is forecast to take a more northerly track through the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West, but looks to be close enough to keep cool weather around for Friday and Saturday. There is weather forecast model disagreement on precipitation potential, though at this point the American model does have a chance of snow Friday night or Saturday, possibly down to the Yampa Valley floor.
Enjoy the warming but windy springtime weather through midweek, and I’ll have an update on the coming weekend weather in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
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