Snows likely Monday and Wednesday

Sunday, January 26, 2020

The partly cloudy morning on this Sunday in Steamboat Springs has finally given way to periods of sun, a welcome sight during this snowy January. A couple of incoming storms will give us good snow chances for Monday and Wednesday, with diminishing chances on Thursday and Friday night as we move through, dare I say, a mostly sunny and warm upcoming weekend.

Ahead of the first storm currently moving through the Great Basin, we should see increasing clouds by later this afternoon, along with some meager snow showers at the higher elevations, most likely in the northern portions of our Park Mountain Range.

The accumulating snow for Mt. Werner won’t start till after midnight, so I would only expect up to an inch on the Monday morning report. But snowfall intensity should increase through the morning, approaching an inch per hour at times, as the storm looks to split, or weaken, a bit less than earlier weather forecast models indicated. Snows should turn more showery after noon, with some showers producing brief, but locally moderate bursts of snow through sunset. We could see 3-6” of snow by around sunset, with lighter-intensity showers hanging on through the night in the the unstable cool, moist and favorable northwest flow. These may yield an additional 1-4” inches that would be added to the Tuesday morning report.

As showers end early in the day on Tuesday, we may see some sun as a quick-moving ridge of high pressure moves over our area ahead of next storm that enters the Great Basin on Wednesday. This storm is forecast to strongly split and weaken during the day Wednesday, with the southern portion diving into Arizona and the northern portion grazing our area through the day. We will get some cold air behind the storm, though the passage of the cold front is after the best moisture has left our area. With the uncertainties around a strongly splitting storm, I would expect total accumulations to be in the 2-5” range from early Wednesday through midnight when the snows should end.

Behind the storm, a ridge of high pressure builds over the West Coast ahead of strong storm forecast to develop south of the Aleutian Islands. Energy and moisture ejecting out of the storm and traveling over the top of the ridge may graze our area Thursday night and early Saturday morning, with light snow showers currently forecast for only Saturday morning. However, snowfall chances for either of these periods may change as the interplay between the ridge of high pressure and the incoming Pacific energy is difficult to forecast at this time.

But weather forecast models agree that a warm and dry ridge of high pressure moves over the West for most of next weekend. The fate of the Aleutian storm is contested by the models, with the European ECMWF moving toward the American GFS in predicting a split in the storm. However, whether the storm splits offshore or onshore will likely determine whether we see any weather associated with the storm during the following work week, and I hope to have more clarity on that by next weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.