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Abstract It is not uncommon for layers within the warm conveyor belt in a frontal system to become potentially unstable, releasing elevated convection. The present study examines this destabilization process over complex terrain, and resulting precipitation, with a focus on the surface coupling, orographic ascent, and the initiation and evolution of convective cells. This study uses detailed observations combined with numerical modeling of a baroclinic system passing over the Idaho Central Mountains in the United States on 7 February 2017. The data were collected as part of the Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime clouds: the Idaho Experiment (SNOWIE). Specifically, observations from a ground-based scanning X-band radar and an airborne profiling Doppler W-band radar along ~100 km long flight tracks aligned with the wind describe the development and evolution of convective cells above shallow stratiform orographic clouds. Convection-permitting numerical simulations of this event, with an inner domain grid resolution of 0.9 km, capture the emergence and vertical structure of the convective cells. Therefore, they are used to describe the advection of warm, moist air over a retreating warm front, cold air pooling within the Snake River Basin and adjacent valleys, destabilization in a moist layer above this shallow stable layer, and instability release in orographic gravity wave updrafts. In this case, the convective cells topped out near 6 km ASL, and the resulting precipitation fell mostly leeward of the ridge where convection was triggered, on account of strong cross-barrier flow. Sequential convection initiation over terrain ridges and rapid downwind transport led to banded precipitation structures.