Record daily and monthly high temperatures on tap
Thursday, March 19, 2026
A gorgeous day with nary a cloud in the sky is over Steamboat Springs this Thursday at noon, with temperatures in town already above 60 degrees, on the way to 70 degrees, and 46 degrees at the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort. Even though the spring equinox is not until Friday at 8:46 AM, the atmosphere has other ideas, and is dishing out temperatures representative of early June, with the forecast high temperatures in the 70’s breaking daily records for the next three days. A breezy Saturday will not only set another new record for the day, but also for the month, ahead of a grazing cool front on Sunday, bringing clouds and high temperatures dropping into the sixties.
An unseasonably strong and warm ridge of high pressure centered over the West Coast is sandwiched between a trough of low pressure extending south from the Aleutian Islands and another over eastern North America. Cold air moving south through the Bering Sea will rotate through the Gulf of Alaska on Friday and Saturday, eventually flattening the ridge while driving it eastward, bringing a cool front through our area on Sunday.
Until then, expect mostly sunny skies with high temperatures around 70 degrees today and Friday, breaking the 64-degree records set for both days in 2017. Winds will increase on Saturday ahead of the cool front on Sunday, with even warmer high temperatures in the mid-seventies, breaking the daily 65-degree record set in 2009, and the monthly 70-degree March record set in 2017, 2012, 2004, and 1897.
Unbelievably, even clouds on a cooler Sunday may not interrupt the string of record-breaking warm days, as high temperatures are forecast to be around the 64-degree record, also set in 2017.
With some clouds to start the workweek, high temperatures are forecast to remain around 20 degrees above the upper-forty-degree average, perhaps reaching the mid-seventies again around midweek ahead of a possible cold front around Thursday.
So enjoy our misplaced summery weather this weekend, and I’ll have more details about the following workweek in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
