Snow showers later Friday ahead of a nice weekend

Thursday, December 8, 2022

The storm that dropped five inches of snow at the Steamboat Ski Resort by the Thursday morning report left an additional two inches before leaving the area and allowing some sun to appear over the Steamboat Springs area this Thursday mid-afternoon. A quick moving wave will bring some snow showers back to the area by Friday afternoon and overnight with meager accumulations ahead of a nice looking weekend. Enjoy the pleasant weekend weather since a large and powerful winter storm will be on our doorstep to start the work week.

An area of low pressure currently stretching southward from the Gulf of Alaska is forecast to cross the West Coast tonight and weaken, turning the partly sunny skies to start Friday cloudy by the afternoon and starting snow showers that are expected to continue into the overnight. We may see an inch or two of accumulations before we see lots of sun and warming temperatures through the weekend, with high temperatures on Saturday around five degrees above our average of 29 F and twice that on Sunday.

Meanwhile, a chunk of very cold air originally from Siberia is forecast to move southward across Alaska and mix with a wave of Pacific energy in the Gulf of Alaska on Friday. Weather forecast models agree a large and powerful winter storm will develop and begin affecting the West Coast on Saturday. The storm is forecast to begin moving through the Great Basin on Sunday, with snow showers out ahead of the main storm starting in our area as early as Monday morning.

Despite its prodigious size, this will not be a slow moving storm to start, so expect snow showers to increase on Monday before the very cold air associated with the storm begins moving through our area Monday night. The storm is forecast to slow as additional cold air from the north is incorporated into the storm through the work week, and we may see quite cold and snowy weather conditions lasting through Thursday with significant accumulations.

So enjoy a very pleasant weekend before the snow and cold returns in what has been a very snowy start to the ski season, and I’ll be back with my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon with more details about our impending winter storm.