Another beautiful day is over Steamboat Springs with mostly sunny skies and upper-mountain temperatures already in the upper thirties, and temperatures in town around freezing, on their way towards fifty degrees. Temperatures are expected to cool several degrees through midweek, with some clouds on Tuesday, followed by light precipitation starting later on Wednesday and colder temperatures on Thursday. More precipitation is possible for the weekend.

A ridge of high pressure over the West is sandwiched between persistent troughs of low pressure over the East and the Gulf of Alaska, and a stout ridge of high pressure over the Dateline. The Dateline ridge is splitting the cold air around the North Pole in half, leaving cold air centers in Canada and Siberia. Most of the cold air from Siberia, carried eastward by the jet stream, has been directed over the Dateline ridge and into the Gulf of Alaska trough, even as some has traveled under the ridge and toward the southern end of that trough.

The result is a complicated weather pattern prone to forecast uncertainty, as it is unclear not only how much cold air travels underneath or over the top of the Dateline ridge, but also how much moves into the Gulf of Alaska trough or moves eastward. Additional uncertainty is related to how much subtropical and possibly tropical moisture may be drawn into the waves of cold air.

Weather forecast models have settled on a wave of cool air with modest moisture moving over our area later Wednesday, pushing the ridge of high pressure over the West eastward. Dry air under the ridge will stick around on Monday, with temperatures cooling a few degrees into the upper forties, still over fifteen degrees above our average of thirty degrees.

Some clouds on Tuesday will drop the high temperatures by another few degrees to the mid-forties, with a high-elevation shower possible. Clouds and winds will be increasing on Wednesday as the wave approaches, with precipitation breaking out later in the day and continuing overnight. Complicating the forecast is the eventual amount of cold air moving southward from western Canada, which may increase or decrease the 2-5” of snowfall expected at mid-mountain for the Thursday morning report. Unfortunately, the warm lower-elevation temperatures mean a rain-snow mix in town.

Thursday will see periods of sun and high temperatures falling to the thirties in town, still around five degrees above average, and the twenties up top. Friday will be warmer, with some morning sun, but there could be afternoon showers ahead of a stronger and more promising wave to start the weekend.

Enjoy the nice start to the workweek, hope for a colder and snowier Wednesday night, and I’ll have more details about the weekend storm in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.