Temperatures to warm into the eighties by midweek
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Cloudless skies and temperatures approaching the mid-sixties are over Steamboat Springs at mid-afternoon on this gorgeous Mother’s Day. After a cool and wintry couple of days last week, summery weather will grace our area this week, with record-high temperatures possible for the days around midweek. An approaching end-of-workweek storm will bring increasing breezes by later Wednesday through Thursday with periods of clouds, but uncertain precipitation chances for Friday.
A ridge of high pressure, downstream of a compact storm moving eastward south of the Aleutian Islands, dominates the West. A weak wave moving across Vancouver will temporarily flatten the ridge of high pressure on Monday, keeping our high temperatures in the upper sixties, around five degrees above our 64-degree average, with continued mostly sunny skies.
The ridge rebounds behind the wave and ahead of the advancing Aleutian storm on Tuesday, allowing temperatures to approach the record high temperature of 81 degrees, set in 1894. We’ve not seen temperatures with an 8-handle since the monthly record 81-degree temperatures on Saturday, March 21, and Wednesday, March 25.
If not on Tuesday, the Wednesday record of 81 degrees set in 1996 will likely fall as the strong ridge of high pressure moves directly over the Rockies, with high temperatures forecast to rise into the mid-eighties.
Meanwhile, the Aleutian storm should be crossing the California-Oregon coast, bringing increasing breezes and clouds by Wednesday afternoon. The storm is forecast to cross the Great Basin on Thursday and bring a cool front through our area on Friday, but not before the 83-degree high temperature record from 1894 is challenged.
While our temperatures will cool into the seventies on Friday behind the front, with uncertain precipitation chances, the high temperature for the day is 85 degrees, also set in 1894. In fact, May 1894 was extraordinarily warm, with 9 high-temperature records set in the 11 days between May 7th and May 17th! That was the warmest May recorded, with an average high temperature of 79.9 degrees, followed by 1897 at 77.9 degrees and 1895 at 76.5 degrees.
Note that record-keeping at the Steamboat Springs did not begin until February 1893; imagine a new settler experiencing what they must have thought was an average May in 1894, reinforced by the next two warmest in 1897 and 1895. Would they have been duped into planning for the continued warmth, or was there enough knowledge passed down in the 20 years since James Crawford first staked his homestead claim to convince them that those warm months were outliers?
In any event, relish the summery week, and I’ll have more details on what we may expect from the advancing Aleutian storm in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
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