Warm and breezy ahead of dry cold front to arrive Monday night
Sunday, June 16, 2024
A very pleasant late Sunday morning is over Steamboat Springs this Father’s Day with temperatures approaching seventy degrees and nary a cloud in the sky. A couple of warm and breezy afternoons will precede a cold front Monday night bringing cooler weather for Tuesday and Wednesday. But the heat returns by Thursday along with a surge of moisture accompanied by rain chances for the end of the workweek.
A ridge of high pressure currently sits over the East while a trough of low pressure is centered over Vancouver. A wave of energy rotating around the Vancouver storm will carry a dry cold front through the Great Basin Monday and our area Monday night. Warm temperatures approaching the mid-eighties, between five and ten degrees above our 77 F average, will be accompanied by increasing winds from the southwest this afternoon and even more so on Monday as the cold front approaches.
High temperatures will only be around seventy degrees on a dry Tuesday which would be the first below-average reading in the last ten days. Average temperatures on Wednesday with a slight chance of afternoon showers will precede a trip back to the low-eighties on Thursday as a surge of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico overspreads Colorado.
Interestingly, the moisture surge will be due to the the eastern dome of high pressure flattening and squirting westward thanks to energy and cold air ejecting from the Vancouver low pressure area and moving across the U.S. and Canadian border. Winds rotating clockwise around the westward-moving high pressure cell will carry a deep layer of moisture northwards from the Gulf of Mexico and increase rain chances for our area by as early as Thursday afternoon. Coincidentally, the summer solstice occurs at 2:50 PM and marks the longest day of the year with fifteen hours and four minutes of daylight over our area.
Better rain chances are forecast for Friday as a wave of energy moving across the Pacific crosses the central California coast on Wednesday and interacts with the Gulf of Mexico moisture over our area by the end of the workweek. Enjoy the cooldown on Tuesday and be sure to check back to my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon for more details on those late workweek rain chances.
