Dry and windy weekend to follow shower chances through Friday
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Comfortable temperatures around 70 degrees and sunny skies are over Steamboat Springs this Thursday mid-afternoon, following rainfall last night that left between a quarter and a third of an inch of rain in town. After additional shower chances later today and tomorrow, a storm approaching the Great Basin will bring dry and windy conditions for the weekend, with comfortable temperatures in the low 80s.
A strong storm moving through the Gulf of Alaska is forecast to rotate through the Great Basin through the weekend, even as additional upstream energy follows. Moisture moving clockwise around a high pressure cell over New Mexico, combined with some ejected energy from the Gulf of Alaska storm, brought the showers last night, with the next batch now crossing northwest Colorado. Expect another round of showers starting late this afternoon, possibly containing small hail, gusty winds, and locally heavy rainfall, lasting through the evening.
After a mostly sunny Friday morning, more showers are possible in the afternoon and evening as the upstream storm moves into the Pacific Northwest, with high temperatures right around our average of 79 degrees. Fortunately, the NOAA smoke model, run four times a day, shows smoke leaving our area this evening, with smoke-free skies lasting at least until Saturday morning.
Most of the storm will be centered over Oregon on Saturday, but will be deflected to the northeast by a building ridge of high pressure over the Southeast, reaching Montana by later Sunday. While temperatures won’t stray from the pleasant low 80s, southwest winds will increase substantially as dry air is drawn overhead, with mountaintop gusts reaching up to 60 mph.
A dry cool front behind the Montana lobe of the storm will pass through later on Sunday, bringing continued mostly sunny skies and below-average high temperatures in the mid-70s on Monday. Temperatures will slowly rebound during the mostly sunny days of next week, reaching the upper 80s as we head into the long Independence Day weekend.
Let’s hope for additional precipitation later today and Friday afternoon ahead of the dry and windy weekend. I’ll have more details on how hot the days leading up to the holiday weekend will be in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
