First week of summer to start hot, dry and breezy
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Welcome to the first official day of summer, though unofficially, it sure feels like we’ve had summery weather for a while. Mostly sunny skies, southwesterly breezes, and temperatures in the mid-seventies are over Steamboat Springs on this Father’s Day mid-afternoon, which is almost 10 degrees cooler than the last few days. But the heat quickly returns this week, with chances for precipitation appearing at the end of the workweek.
The hazy skies last night were due to wildfire smoke from the Iron fire near Eureka, Utah, about 40 miles southwest of Provo. This has prompted me to add an air quality widget to the SnowAlarm home page, with a link to the NOAA smoke model. The current forecasts show a brief plume of smoke passing overhead around midnight, followed by a more sustained period of smoke arriving Monday afternoon and lasting through at least Tuesday.
The winds transporting the smoke are driven by the jet stream positioned over the Canadian border. Behind the Pacific disturbance bringing the near-average temperatures of 78 degrees today, a ridge of high pressure will build over the Desert Southwest through midweek. High temperatures will rise back to just below the mid-80s on Monday, followed by a couple of degrees of warming for Tuesday and Wednesday, with continued afternoon breezes.
Clouds and afternoon and evening thunderstorm chances appear on Thursday and Friday as the monsoonal-like clockwise circulation around the high pressure carries some moisture from the Gulf of California and the nearby Pacific overhead, cooling temperatures by a few degrees.
Meanwhile, a storm over the Aleutian Islands strengthens and moves toward Vancouver by Friday, settling over the Pacific Northwest during the weekend. Initially, we will see dry air moving overhead with strong winds to start the weekend, though the strength and eventual storm track are uncertain.
So enjoy the first week of summer, and I’ll have more details on the end-of-workweek precipitation chances and how the weekend is shaping up in my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Thursday afternoon.
