Rain showers likely from Sunday through Tuesday

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Only several days removed from our last snowfall in Steamboat Springs on this past Sunday, I can finally talk about summer weather! A disturbance from the south will increase the chances of rainfall starting later Sunday and Monday, while a disturbance to our north will continue those increased chances on Tuesday. Drier air should be around for Wednesday and Thursday, the Fourth of July, before rainfall chances increase again as we head into the long holiday weekend, courtesy of the North American Monsoon.

A large and cold storm currently in the Pacific Northwest will split into several pieces over the next several days thanks to incoming Pacific energy and cold air moving southward from just south of the Arctic Circle. The storm will undergo a complicated evolution, but our area will be spared most of the forecast uncertainty as a sprawling ridge of high pressure encompassing much of the U.S. shunts most of the storm to our north. Unlike last week, this is representative of average summer weather.

Ahead of the storm, we should see mostly sunny and dry weather with breezy southwest winds for the rest of today and Friday. On Saturday, the remnants of Alvin, the first subtropical storm of the season that originated off the western coast of Mexico, will travel along the western periphery of the ridge of high pressure and increase moisture over our area.

There may be some chance of showers Saturday afternoon and evening as the remnants of Alvin approach, but much better chances emerge on Sunday and Monday as the subtropical disturbance passes overhead.

Winds will decrease and swing to be more from the west on Monday and northwest on Tuesday as a piece of the old Pacific Northwest storm mixes with the cold air originally from the Arctic Circle and treks across the Canadian Plains. A weak cool front is forecast to move across our area later Tuesday or early Wednesday, and good shower chances will continue ahead of and along the front.

Drier air moves in from the west behind the front on Wednesday and Thursday, Independence Day, before moisture is again forecast to increase heading into the holiday weekend, this time from the south as the North American Monsoon develops. After three major snowstorms that contained inch per hour snowfall rates at the higher elevations for about twenty hours or so around May 22, May 29 and June 21, it appears the atmosphere is returning to some sort of normalcy with the on-time arrival of the monsoon.