Dry weather and slowly warming temperatures to start the workweek
Sunday, January 25, 2026
Light snow is falling early this Sunday afternoon in Steamboat Springs, with temperatures only in the mid-teens in town and minus one degree at the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort. The arctic air mass responsible for the cold and snow will slowly moderate through the workweek, with mostly clear skies through Wednesday leading to cold mornings and mostly sunny days. Grazing storms on Tuesday and Thursday will bring some clouds, with the best, but still slim, hope for additional moisture on Thursday.
Four inches of new snow were reported Saturday morning at mid-mountain, while six inches were recorded up top, with an additional inch falling early in the morning. A beautifully crisp and sunny Saturday afternoon gave way to another several inches of overnight snow in time for the three-inch mid-mountain Sunday report, with four inches reported up top.
A reinforcing surge of cold air this morning has brought an additional two inches of powder to mid-mountain in our favorable cold, moist, and unstable northwest flow behind the storm. The upper-mountain powdercam is showing little accumulation, perhaps due to the frigid temperatures, which cause snow crystals to assume a narrower, more columnar shape and fall more densely.
Expect the snows to become more showery through sunset, even if they are heavy at times, with another inch or two possible. Clearing skies overnight will lead to an unreasonably cold Monday morning, with low temperatures at all elevations around minus ten degrees, well below our five-degree in-town average.
An eastward-expanding ridge of high pressure over the West Coast will bring warmer air overhead on a mostly sunny Monday, though the cold start to the day will keep high temperatures below our thirty-degree average.
A wave moving through the ridge will graze our area early on Tuesday, and may bring only some clouds to start the day. Those clouds will help insulate the surface like a blanket, keeping the low temperature above zero, with high temperatures reaching around average.
The warming continues on a mostly sunny Wednesday with mid-thirty-degree high temperatures, before another wave grazes our area on Thursday. Enough moisture may accompany the wave for some snow showers, though likely relegated to the higher elevations closer to the Wyoming border.
Nice weather is expected to follow into next weekend, with weather forecast models disagreeing on whether a small amount of moisture makes it through the ridge late in the weekend or early the following week. I’ll have more details about that in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
