Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 9 years ago December 21, 2014

Welcome to Winter...

Summary:

The sun should begin to return later today with sunny and mild conditions through Tuesday.  On Christmas Eve a cold front will push through bringing colder air and a chance of light snow showers.  Cooler air remains into next weekend before another cold front could push through next Sunday.  The next chance for a stronger storms looks to be the first week of January, but confidence is low.

 

 

Details:

Winter begins today at 3 p.m.  Winter will bring us colder weather, and let's hope it's not long before it brings us snowy weather as well.

The ski resorts are reporting an inch or two of snow yesterday up top from the showers that moved through as warmer air moved in.

The ridge will continue to strengthen today along the West Coast bringing drier conditions through Tuesday.  A cold system will push into the Pacific NW Wednesday and will move Southeast pushing a cold front through the Sierra Christmas Eve.  There is not much precip associated with the front as the system drops down to our East.

hpc 

We may see a dusting across the basin and if we are lucky an inch or two on the mountains.

By Friday a weak ridge may build in with temperatures cool but not quite as cold going into the weekend.  The European model shows another cold front moving down from the North next Sunday with colder air and a chance of light snow.  The GFS keeps the ridge closer to the coast with continued dry conditions and not as cold.

Long-Range:

Still a lot of uncertainty in the longer range.  The GFS has the ridge along the entire West Coast up to Western Canada.  The European model runs have the ridge further West in the Northeast Pacific.  The difference would be how cold we are and not whether or not we see a storm as they are both dry heading towards New Years Eve.

As we go into the first week of January the GFS is back showing the ridge further North towards Alaska and the jet stream trying to push underneath into the West Coast.  The European ensembles control run hints at a similar pattern, and the CFS shows increase precip the first week of the month.  

Here is a look at the rest of the month on the CFSv2 precip forecast, which averages 4 ensemble runs averaged over the 10 days.

cfs

and the first 10 days of January...

cfs

We can't use these as a forecast.  We just follow them daily looking for a trend in the guidance as to what pattern we may be heading towards, and looking at why they may be showing what they are.  I look for the trend of the majority of the runs as well as the teleconnection pattern forecasts and try to mention where we may be heading.  But anything beyond 10 days can't be trusted.

Let's hope the forecast model runs are catching onto the start of the pattern we have been forecasting and hoping for in the heart of Winter, which brings storms into CA.

Stay tuned....BA

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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