Weekend to start nicely but end with Labor Day showers
Thursday, September 3, 2026
Temperatures in Steamboat Springs are approaching 80 degrees with sunny skies this Thursday mid-afternoon. While the long Labor Day weekend will start mostly sunny, increasing moisture from Hurricane Marie will conspire with energy ejecting from a storm in the Pacific Northwest to bring increasing thunderstorm chances starting later Sunday and lasting through Monday.
The current breezy conditions are due to southwesterly winds accelerating between a large, complex area of low pressure centered over the Pacific Northwest coast and a building ridge of high pressure over the Great Plains. Additionally, Hurricane Marie is moving slowly northwesterly from its current location southwest of southern Baja.
The Pacific Northwest storm is forecast to wobble inland through Sunday and Idaho on Monday, ejecting energy that will move northeastward ahead of the storm, even as additional energy moving through the Gulf of Alaska redevelops a trough of low pressure off Northern California’s coast. As Marie moves slowly northwestward in the Eastern Pacific, some of the hurricane’s moisture will be drawn into the southwest winds ahead of the Pacific Northwest low, moving over Utah on Sunday and our area on Monday.
Temperatures in the low 80s, around 5 degrees above the 77-degree averages, will persist through Sunday, with a mix of sun and clouds on Saturday turning cloudier through Sunday afternoon and evening.
Showers become more likely by Sunday night and Monday as what’s left of the Pacific Northwest storm rotates through Idaho on Monday, lending more energy to the thunderstorms. More cloud cover and the numerous showers likely on Labor Day will cool temperatures to around average.
Drier air sweeps overhead on Tuesday behind the Idaho storm as it moves into Montana, with moisture returning soon after due not only to another tropical storm possibly developing near Baja, but also to interactions between Marie and the developing trough off the West Coast.
Enjoy the nice start to the long Labor Day weekend, and I’ll have more details on Monday’s rain chances in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
