Tahoe Daily Snow

Heads up, there may be fresher snow! Read the latest Tahoe Daily Snow

By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 5 years ago March 18, 2019

Weak Systems Refresh the Snow on the Mountains...

Summary

- We will see dry & mild weather through Tuesday. Highs in the 40's on the mountains and 50's at lake level. - A weak system pushes in Tuesday night, with scattered showers possible into Thursday. Snow levels starting around 8,000 feet, falling to around 6,500 feet Wednesday, 5,500 feet Wednesday night, and back up to 7,500 feet Thursday. We could see 1-6 inches of snow on the mountains above 7,000 feet with rain at lake level. Highs in the 30's on the mountains and near 40 at lake level. - We could see a break on Friday. Then another storm could bring several inches of snow Friday night into Saturday. Snow levels starting above 7,000 feet and falling below lake level as the front sweeps through. - We could see more storms the week of the 25th.

Short Term Forecast

Not too many changes to the forecast this morning.  Slightly higher snow levels and slightly less precip for the Tuesday night-Thursday system.  A break Sunday into Monday with a slower arrival of the 3rd system next week.  Other than that the forecast is on track.  Get out and enjoy the last cloudless day today!

sun

Tuesday we will see increasing clouds by afternoon as the next storm approaches, but we will also see some sun and mild temperatures.

System #1:

Tuesday night a negatively tilted trough pushes into CA.  That may limit the amount of precipitation that pushes into the Tahoe basin initially.  But by Wednesday we should see showers across most of the basin.  Then as the low slowly moves to the south we could see wraparound showers Wednesday night into Thursday, but they look very scattered.

The snow levels look to start high around 8,000 feet Tuesday night but fall to around 6,500 feet by Wednesday morning.  Then they could hover there through Wednesday as most of the precip with this system falls.  So mainly all rain expected at lake level.  Then Wednesday night snow levels could dip to 5,500 feet before rising up to 7,500 feet Thursday as the system completely clears out.

The forecast models have pulled back this morning on total precipitation amounts.  The NAM is still the wettest model but now only has up to 3/4 of an inch of total precip.  The Canadian model is the lowest with up to 1/4 of an inch.  The average is around 6 tenths which is similar to the WPC model forecast through Thursday.

wpc1

That is very weak by Tahoe standards, and with snow ratios averaging around 10:1 at 8,000 feet it will only produce up to several inches of snow on the mountains.  Here is the updated snowfall forecast.

forecast

Expect that snow to be wet at 7,000 feet, and drier above 8,000 feet.  The winds are pretty weak with this storm as well.  Not expecting any lift issues right now.

We should see a break for Friday with some sun in the morning.  Highs are cooler with 30's on the upper mountains and 40's at lake level.  We should see increasing clouds in the afternoon as the next system approaches.

System #2:

The next system is a fast moving wave that sweeps a front through Friday night into Saturday morning.  We could see snow levels start around 7,000 feet Friday night and fall below lake level as the cold front moves through.

Total precipitation amounts look similar to the first system, except this time most of the precip falls in a shorter 12-hour window.  We could see a quick burst of a few hours of heavy snow as the front moves through, and then scattered snow showers possible behind the front Saturday afternoon, but we may clear out pretty quickly.  Here the WPC model through Saturday.

wpc2

We could see a quick 3-6 inches on most mountains with this system.  I'll have the final forecast for system #1 tomorrow morning, and the initial forecast table for system #2 as it gets into the 5-day window.

We could see another break between storms Sunday into next Monday with highs in the 30's and 40's.

Extended Forecast

System #3:

The next system has been slowing down on the latest model runs.  They show it pushing in later next Tuesday into Wednesday.  It looks like a slower moving system that could linger into next Thursday.  We will keep an eye on that and continue to fine-tune the forecast as we get closer.

Fantasy Range:

We may get another quick break the last few days of the month.  But the long-range models continue to show lower heights over CA through the first week of April, indicating that the storm door may remain open and storms may continue to move through CA.

trough

The 2-week GFS ensemble mean model continues to show 3-4 inches of total precipitation over Tahoe over the next 2 weeks.  Around an inch of that from the first two systems through this Saturday, around an inch from the third system next week, and some heavier precipitation amounts from the storms that could move through the first few days of April.

gefs

There are no signs yet that the storm door will shut in the long-range.  We could continue to see systems every few days or so into April.

Stay tuned...BA

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About Our Forecaster

Bryan Allegretto

Forecaster

Bryan Allegretto has been writing insightful posts about snow storms for over the last 15 years and is known as Tahoe's go-to snow forecaster. BA grew up in south Jersey, surfing, snowboarding, and chasing down the storms creating the epic conditions for both.

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