Weak cold front tonight followed by strong cold front Monday night

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Sunny skies are over the Steamboat Springs area this Sunday noon behind the showery day on Saturday, where areas within the city limits picked up between a third and a half inch of precipitation. Most of this occurred just before 5 pm as a line of storms moved through, accompanied by wind gusts of fifty miles per hour at the Bob Adams airport.

A weak cool front is forecast to move through tonight followed by a second strong cold front on Monday night, finally bringing some below average temperatures on Tuesday. But temperature rebound on Wednesday and stay warm through most of the weekend before another cold approaches around the end of weekend.

This afternoon, we should see breezy westerly winds ahead of the fairly dry and weak cool front tonight, with high temperatures once again above our average of 78 F.

High temperatures on Monday should cool a bit and be in the seventies behind the first front, but we’ll see another round of breezy westerly winds ahead of the second front for Monday night. This front is the real deal, and will be accompanied by some moisture, so expect a showery night with some snowflakes at the highest elevations.

Tuesday should have hints of fall, entirely appropriate for the first day of meteorological fall, with high temperatures five or so degrees below average. The cool-down will be brief though, as the still-strong sun will quickly modify the air mass and bring high temperatures on Wednesday back above average.

Parts of a storm currently riding over the top of a ridge of high pressure in the Gulf of Alaska will mix with some cold air currently over the Canadian Plains and may graze our area on Thursday morning. While the brunt of the cold air will be east of the Divide, we could see a chilly Thursday morning that would make it the coldest of the week, especially if we see clear skies.

But again, temperatures will quickly warm under mostly sunny skies, so expect the warm, above average highs to persist into the following weekend. There is some agreement among the longer-range weather forecast models that another Pacific storm will round the ridge of high pressure over the Gulf of Alaska and bring another cold front through our area around Sunday. Early indications are this front would be colder than the one coming this Monday night, but dry and windy, so stay tuned to my regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon where I’ll have more details.