Hot and dry weather persists through the Labor Day weekend
Thursday, September 1, 2022
Temperatures are already in the mid-eighties under mostly sunny skies early this Thursday afternoon in the Steamboat Springs area. The weather for the long Labor Day weekend features more of the same, with high temperatures approaching record values and near nil chances for rain.
As has been the case for a lot of the summer, a ridge of high pressure over the West is sandwiched between deep areas of low pressure over the Gulf of Alaska and Hudson Bay. While the center of the ridge is currently over the West Coast, cold air currently spilling across the Bering Sea is forecast to kick the Gulf of Alaska storm eastward across the Pacific Northwest this weekend as a new and cold storm forms in its place. The result for our area will be even warmer temperatures for the long Labor Day weekend than the last few days as the ridge moves directly overhead, with the daily high temperature records of 91 F for Friday, Saturday and Monday and 90 F on Sunday approached or even broken. Some passing clouds this afternoon and Friday afternoon may briefly moderate the hot afternoon temperatures.
There is not much change in the weather forecast through midweek other than a degree or two of cooling after the weekend. We could be seeing our first cold front of the season by the end of the next work week as the storm forecast to form in the Gulf of Alaska this weekend eventually interacts with an eastward moving storm currently in the Sea of Japan.
Enjoy the traditional end-of-summer weekend that will likely feel as hot as any day this summer, and check back to my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon where the end of this heat wave should be in better focus.
