The cold dry air that we have seen at night has not only made for great snowmaking conditions, but it's also good for starting fires.  We had a break in the winds yesterday, but a cold front moving through tonight will bring back the strong East winds and low humidity.  Good for more snowmaking and not good for all the fires burning.

Mt. Rose and Boreal are open this weekend.  All the snowmaking this week allowed Boreal to open on Friday.  The rest of the ski resorts have been pumping snow and will continue to this upcoming week.  It's not just the cold nights, but the dry air helps with snowmaking.  Injecting water into the dry air will cool the air even more, which means you can add in even more water and make snow faster.

The forecast hasn't changed much for the long-range over the last several days.  It still looks as if the pattern may begin to change next weekend with the ridge over the West Coast starting to shift. 

There were some model runs the last few days hinting at the first storm being next weekend.  The storm is still there on the latest runs.  They just have the storm splitting and weakening as it approaches CA.  That's not uncommon with the first storm trying to push in after a long dry spell, as the pattern tries to start changing.  

We will have to keep an eye on next weekend to see what happens with an initial storm trying to push in.  Overall, like I've been saying, the pattern is just starting to change next weekend and isn't that great for storms yet.  It gets better as we go through Thanksgiving week.

Here is a look at the latest GFS 10 day precipitation forecast.

The long-range ensemble mean runs of the models continue to be consistent and in agreement on the ridge shifting out towards 160w Thanksgiving week.  That sets up a good pattern for cold storms to drop into CA.

Looking way out in fantasy range that pattern is shown to stay through the last week of November.

The ensemble mean precip forecasts of the GFS and European models get wet Thanksgiving week.

So we are still in the same place we have been all week.  Just waiting for Thanksgiving week to get here to see if this pattern change holds.  If it does it would be a great pattern for cold storms that could pile up the first measurable snowfalls of the season.  As soon as I see a consistent storm within 7 days I'll start forecasting snow.

Stay tuned...BA

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