Cooler weather with significant precipitation to start Tuesday and last into the weekend
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Mostly sunny skies are over Steamboat Springs late this Sunday morning, with temperatures at 60 degrees in town and 40 degrees at the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort. Another couple of record-challenging 70-degree days will precede a pattern change starting Tuesday, bringing significant precipitation and increasingly cold temperatures lasting into the weekend.
An eddy of low pressure between Hawaii and northern California will be sheared apart over the next few days by a storm now crossing the Vancouver coast, and another moving eastward from the Bering Sea. Some moisture will be drawn toward the Vancouver storm, moving over our area tonight and Monday with some clouds. But that won’t affect the chance for record-breaking temperatures today or Monday, as the records stand at 67 degrees today, set in 1986, and 70 degrees on Monday, set in 2004.
In fact, we have likely broken high-temperature records for most days this past week, but the tally will have to wait until data from the official weather station for Steamboat Springs, near the high school, is published.
As the Vancouver storm moves across northern Montana on Monday night, some energy from the southern part of the storm will combine with the moisture, leading to some shower chances on a cooler Tuesday. But high temperatures will still be around 10 degrees above our average of 50 degrees.
Meanwhile, the Bering Sea storm will strengthen as it moves across the Gulf of Alaska on Tuesday, ejecting part of the eddy across the West Coast Tuesday night and our area on Wednesday. Expect a rainy day at low elevations, with snow levels falling to around 8,500′ by the afternoon. There might be an inch or two of snow up top by the Wednesday morning mid-mountain ski report, with an additional 3-6” during the day and another 1-4” overnight.
Thursday will be an in-between day behind the departing storm and ahead of the original Bering Sea storm, which is forecast to cross the Pacific Northwest coast on Wednesday, bringing a strong cold front through our area around Thursday night.
This will finally drop high temperatures below average for Friday and Saturday, with snow likely in town by Friday morning and another round of significant snow up top, far lighter and fluffier than the snow that fell on Wednesday.
So enjoy the last two summery days of this extraordinarily warm March, and look forward to the likely significant precipitation which may eventually bring around 2” of liquid equivalent to our struggling high-elevation snowpack, and almost half that to town. I’ll have more details on the Friday storm and how long it may last into the weekend in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
