Snows to finally arrive and bookend the weekend
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Temperatures are in the upper thirties with overcast skies on this Thanksgiving noon in Steamboat Springs, on their way to the mid-forties as some sun appears this afternoon. While Friday will start mostly sunny, increasing afternoon clouds will precede a strong cold front, bringing snowfall to all elevations later Friday into Saturday. Another storm in favorable northwest flow will bring more snowfall to our area from later Sunday into Monday, with a third storm possible around midweek.
Our dry start to the winter season mercifully looks to end by Friday night as a series of ridges of high pressure build over and north of Alaska, directing more cold air from the North Pole southward and placing our area in favorable northwest flow. A Pacific storm moving under the ridge through the Gulf of Alaska is currently bringing precipitation to the Pacific Northwest. It will ingest some cold western Canadian air as it moves through Idaho early Friday, bringing a strong cold front through our area Friday night.
While Friday will start with some morning sun, allowing high temperatures to rise to the upper forties, over ten degrees above our average of thirty-six degrees, increasing afternoon clouds will mark a pattern change that will start a period of cold and unsettled weather in favorable northwest flow. Energy ejecting out ahead of the storm may start snow showers as early as Friday afternoon, with light to moderate snow showers as the storm moves across Friday night. The cold front will follow before sunrise, continuing the snow showers into the morning and leaving 3-6” of snow at mid-mountain by the Saturday morning ski report.
Below-average temperatures will follow the front, with high temperatures on Saturday only around thirty degrees in town and the teens up top. Clouds will decrease by Saturday afternoon, perhaps allowing for some sun that may also appear Sunday morning, but the next storm will start another round of snow by Sunday afternoon.
This storm will feature the northern part of the weather system now splitting over the Aleutian Islands. It is forecast to cross the Vancouver coast on Saturday and, due to a quickly building ridge of high pressure behind it in the Gulf of Alaska, be forced into the Great Basin early Sunday. It too will ingest cold air from western Canada, starting snow showers by Sunday afternoon that will continue into Monday morning.
Snow accumulations could be similar to Friday night’s storm, though forecast amounts are still changing in the weather models. After a short break, unsettled weather is forecast to return midweek.
Your snow dances are working, so keep up the good work! Enjoy the snowfall that truly starts the winter season over the Thanksgiving weekend, and I’ll have more details on the snow amounts expected by Monday morning and the possible midweek storm in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
Cold front to arrive Monday night with meager snow chances through midweek
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Temperatures are approaching forty degrees in the town of Steamboat Springs and freezing at the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort late this Sunday morning with partly cloudy skies. The warm temperatures this past week will last through Monday and be followed by cooler temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday after a mostly dry cold front passes through our area Monday night. There will be chances for minor snow accumulations with the front, and again on Wednesday, but warmer temperatures are expected for Thanksgiving and Black Friday before a promising storm could arrive around next weekend.
A storm to our south has brought five inches of snow to Wolf Creek, but only some passing clouds to our area. After high temperatures reach the upper forties this afternoon, Monday will start mostly sunny with high temperatures several degrees cooler than today, but still above our average of thirty-eight degrees. Clouds will increase in the afternoon as a storm from the Pacific Northwest approaches.
The cold front associated with the storm will be fairly dry, but the storm ingests some cold air from western Canada, bringing snow flurries Monday night and Tuesday, with only meager accumulations on the hill. A ridge of high pressure briefly builds over the West Coast through midweek, keeping northwest flow overhead that warms the mid-thirty-degree high temperatures on a mostly sunny Tuesday afternoon to around forty degrees on Wednesday, and the mid-to-upper forties on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
A wave moving through the northwest flow will bring clouds back to our area on Wednesday, along with another chance of high-elevation snow flurries. Weather forecast models have been advertising a promising storm around next weekend for several days now, though the timing, location, and snow potential are uncertain. What is more certain is that arctic air will accompany this storm, bringing cold wintertime temperatures to our area that look to hang around for a while.
There should be no travel impacts over Rabbit Ears Pass to start the Thanksgiving holiday, but the return trip next weekend could be a different story. Enjoy the great man-made snow conditions at the top of the Steamboat Ski Area this week, which will be helped by the early-week cooldown, and I’ll have more details on the evolving wintry storm in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
Dwindling precipitation chances on Friday to precede a nice weekend
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Temperatures are in the upper forties on this Thursday mid-afternoon in Steamboat Springs with partly sunny skies. Precipitation chances have diminished for Friday, leaving only some upper-elevation snow showers and cooler temperatures. Warmer temperatures return for the weekend, including mostly sunny skies for Opening Day at the Steamboat Ski Resort on Saturday.
Thank you to those who attended my presentation on Tuesday night at the library, and no one should have been surprised by the quick shower that passed through early Wednesday morning. I want to elaborate on a couple of questions I received regarding snowfall forecasts and wind direction.
Shown are four panels from the NAM forecast made at 11 am today and valid for 5 am Friday. Remember the first panel in the upper left represents the atmosphere at around 18,000′, or half its total depth, with the red denoting storm energy, or spin.
The second panel in the lower left is a forecast for the mountain-top level of around 12,000′, with green and orange denoting high and low relative humidities, respectively, and the third panel in the upper right is the surface pressure pattern.
In all of these, I have drawn green arrows indicating the wind direction at these three levels, which tend to follow along the black lines. These indicate constant height surfaces, or isoheights, in the first two panels and pressure surfaces, or isobars, in the third. Note the split flow, where the northern part of the jet stream flows across southern Canada and the southern part, which is comprised of a large eddy off the southern California coast, a smaller eddy in western Kansas, and a ridge of high pressure over the Southeast. Also note the counterclockwise circulation around the eddies, with clockwise circulation around the high pressure areas in the Dakotas and the Southeast. Generally, the denser the isoheights and isobars, the faster the winds.
The fourth panel in the lower right indicates precipitation, and I neglected to mention that this is a quantitative precipitation forecast, or QPF. The multicolored bar at the bottom of this panel indicates liquid forecast amounts, in millimeters, forecast to fall in the previous six hours, highlighted by the green arrows over coastal British Columbia, southern California, and Missouri. The dark blue indicates a range between 50 and 75 mm, while the light green indicates a range between 125 and 150 mm.
The final step for snow forecasting is converting the forecast liquid water into snow, which is temperature-dependent. A first-order estimate is 10:1, which represents dense snow, while the light and dry powder is around 20:1 or higher. This conversion adds complexity to already difficult forecasts.
Finally, I have added total accumulated snowfall underlying the forecast radar returns shown in the Rapid Refresh radar forecast, found by selecting NCEP in the MODEL DATA menu. Selecting a d(prog)/dt for 18Z Friday explicitly shows the dwindling forecast snow amounts over the last four runs. Since the Tuesday talk, those snow amounts went up to as high as 8” in the Wednesday 18Z, or 11 am, forecast, to nothing from today’s forecast. This was due to the changing forecast track of the eddy, which moved from northeastern Colorado to western Kansas.
There may be some spotty showers around Friday, but other than temperatures in town falling to the low forties, several degrees above our average of thirty-nine degrees, not much weather is expected from the grazing eddy.
A transient ridge of high pressure behind the departing eddy and ahead of the California eddy will make for a mostly sunny Opening Day at the Steamboat Ski Resort, with high temperatures in town rising back to the upper-forties. The California eddy is forecast to enter Arizona on Saturday and approach the Four Corners on Sunday, bringing precipitation to Arizona, New Mexico, and southern and eastern Colorado, but only some clouds to our area, allowing high temperatures to stay in the upper forties.
Meanwhile, a northern Pacific wave of energy moving across the Gulf of Alaska is forecast to cross the Pacific Northwest coast late in the weekend, ingesting some cold western Canadian air as it brings a cold front into our area around Monday night. Moisture is limited with this front and the cool northwest flow that follows through Thanksgiving, but there is some hope for snow.
Enjoy the nice weekend, and I’ll have more details about the cold front early next holiday week and what follows in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
Wintry weather to begin tonight
Sunday, November 16, 2025
Though Sunday morning started cloudy, mostly sunny skies with temperatures around fifty degrees, on the way towards sixty degrees, are over Steamboat Springs late this morning. But the clouds will return later this afternoon ahead of an approaching storm that will bring wintry weather tonight. Starting as rain below 10,000′, a cold front will bring much colder temperatures and significant snowfall above 8,000′ through Monday, with a bit of snow possible in town. The cold air persists through the workweek, with uncertain precipitation chances around and after midweek.
An eddy of low pressure over southern Nevada is on the move, forced northeastward by another storm approaching the West Coast. While temperatures will approach sixty degrees this afternoon, over fifteen degrees above our average of forty-two degrees, the approaching storm will increase clouds this afternoon, bringing a cold front by mid-evening.
The storm is warm, with snow levels starting near 10,000′ before falling toward the Yampa Valley bottom by Monday morning. Fortunately, the storm has trended further north, wetter, and colder over the last few days, bringing 2-5” of snow above 8,000′ and maybe an inch in town by Monday morning.
This snowfall is sorely needed, not only to begin the season’s snowpack, but also for Opening Day at the Steamboat Ski Resort on this coming Saturday. While coverage on Lower High Noon yesterday was sparse, as shown in the photo I took from near the top of the Sunnyside trail, I’m guessing snowmaking efforts, aided by the colder temperatures this week, will allow access via the Wild Blue Gondola to Upper High Noon, perhaps Tomahawk, and the Sunshine lift.
The eddy is forecast to be in northeast Colorado by Monday afternoon, allowing snow showers to continue in the favorable, moist, and unstable northwest flow behind the storm. High temperatures in town will fall to average, perhaps not even breaching forty degrees, with another 2-5” of snow above 8,000′.
Meanwhile, the next storm will split as it crosses the West Coast Monday afternoon, with the southern end forming another eddy that is forecast to slowly move across southern California through midweek. A transient ridge of high pressure will form over the Intermountain West for at least part of Tuesday, allowing temperatures to rise into the upper forties with periods of sun.
There is a lot of uncertainty starting later Tuesday regarding not only the speed and track of the eddy, but also the northern part of the split, which moves across the Northern Rockies on Wednesday. We could see precipitation chances, perhaps lasting into Thursday, from either the eddy if it moves far enough north, or the northern stream if it extends far enough south.
I will not have those details before my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon, but will have an updated forecast at the Bud Werner Memorial Library on Tuesday, November 18th, at 6:30 pm, where I’ll be discussing how I use the SnowAlarm website to forecast the weather.
Pattern change delayed until later Sunday
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Another spectacular fall day is over Steamboat Springs this Thursday mid-afternoon with sunny skies and temperatures just above sixty degrees, fifteen degrees above average. A storm to our north will bring some breezes on Friday and passing clouds on Saturday, along with a few degrees of cooling to start the weekend. By later Sunday, the pattern change that was earlier expected as early as Friday finally arrives, with increasing clouds during the day and showers by the afternoon or evening.
Fall and spring storms can be difficult to forecast as cold air is rapidly forming in the northern latitudes while warm air still resides in the southern latitudes. One or the other will dominate, though subtle differences in the atmospheric flows eventually dictate the outcome. This storm ended up slowing and splitting compared to the weather model guidance used in last Sunday’s weather narrative, delaying the anticipated pattern change and bringing another several days of very pleasant fall weather.
The northern end of the storm is forecast to traverse the Northern Rockies on Friday, bringing increased westerly breezes in the afternoon, but leaving our high temperatures untouched and in the lower sixties. The grazing storm will knock high temperatures back several degrees into the high fifties on Saturday, still around fifteen degrees above our rapidly falling average of forty-three degrees, along with some passing clouds.
Meanwhile, the southern end of the split storm will be forced eastward across southern California Saturday night by a new storm forecast to develop in the Gulf of Alaska on Saturday and accelerate northeastward across the Great Basin during Sunday. There is still uncertainty regarding the onset of precipitation, but we can expect a mostly cloudy day with increasing chances of showers, possibly as early as noon or as late as the evening.
Due to its southern trajectory, the storm will be warm, with rain in town and snow levels starting near 10,000′ early Sunday and declining to around 7,500′ by early Monday. Precipitation should taper off during the day, with current forecasts indicating about a third of an inch of rain in town and 3-6” of snow near the top of the Steamboat Ski Area by Monday afternoon.
The developing Gulf of Alaska storm is then forecast to cross the West Coast on Monday, with its evolution and path as it moves eastward uncertain. Be sure to take advantage of what may be our last stretch of beautiful fall weather, and I’ll have more details on what to expect next week in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon. And remember, please join me on Tuesday, November 18th, at 6:30 pm at the Bud Werner Memorial Library, where I’ll be discussing how I use the SnowAlarm website to forecast the weather.
