Happy hump day and thanks for checking in. I wish I had better snow-related news, but there is still good to talk about.

The good – even though Monday night's storm didn't produce measurable snow, it did drop temperatures by 10-15 degrees and these cooler readings should persist through the week. Cooler temperatures should allow for a bit more snowmaking. Another piece of good news is that we will likely see snow on Sunday and Monday with at least a few inches of accumulation and perhaps more if the storm comes together just right.

The bad – we will not see natural snow this week, and after the Sunday/Monday storm moves away, it's likely that we'll return to a drier weather pattern through mid-December. This drier pattern does not preclude a storm from sneaking into Steamboat, but the odds are against it.

There is hope on the long-range horizon as some models predict a change in the weather pattern during the final 10 days of December. It's unwise to trust weather forecasts 25 days into the future, but at this point, I'm open to anything!

Stay tuned for daily updates, and thanks for reading!

JOEL GRATZ, Meteorologist at OpenSnow.com