Summery workweek ahead
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Temperatures are in the low 60s, headed to the mid 60s, this Sunday mid-afternoon in Steamboat Springs. Today, a mix of sun, clouds, and a few raindrops marks the end of the storm system that brought around 2/3” of rainfall to town between Thursday and Saturday. Appropriately, the first day of meteorological summer on Monday, June 1, will see mid-70s temperatures and mostly sunny skies. Even warmer temperatures around 80 degrees will be with us through the workweek, with mostly sunny skies prevailing except on Wednesday, when a weak disturbance passes through the area.
The rainfall over the last several days boosted the accumulated May rainfall to a welcome 3.51”, exceeding the 2.65” average by about a third, while the 2” of snowfall on May 5th was just below the 2.8” monthly average.
The main part of the previous storm system has been deflected into Montana by a building ridge of high pressure extending from Texas into the Great Plains. A trailing wave, responsible for the clouds and a few raindrops today, is grazing our area and will follow the main storm into Montana on Monday, leaving our area with mostly sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid-70s, just above the average of 72 degrees.
Even warmer temperatures around 80 degrees are forecast on a mostly sunny Tuesday as the Texas ridge of high pressure builds into the upper Midwest.
Meanwhile, a weak Pacific disturbance, perhaps associated with a lobe of energy ejecting from a developing storm in the Gulf of Alaska, is forecast to cross the southern California coast on Tuesday and split, with the southern part of the split moving south into Baja and the northern part riding northward along the west side of the Texas ridge.
We may see some Tuesday afternoon clouds ahead of the disturbance, with more clouds on Wednesday as mid-level moisture increases from both the disturbance and from moisture carried northward from the clockwise circulation around the Texas ridge.
Weak counterclockwise winds rotating around the Baja disturbance will provide another source of northward-moving moisture in a monsoonal-like pattern, perhaps bringing another cloudy afternoon on Thursday, depending upon the eventual westward extent of the moisture.
More summery weather is forecast heading into next weekend, with uncertainty near the end of the weekend regarding the southern extent of the Gulf of Alaska storm as it crosses the Pacific Northwest coast mid-weekend. The European ECMWF is advertising a split storm, with the southern part moving into the Great Basin on Sunday, while the American GFS rotates an intact storm across the Northern Rockies.
So enjoy the stellar first week of meteorological summer, and I’ll have more details about the weekend in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
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