Tahoe Daily Snow

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

By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 9 years ago January 28, 2015

Nerdy Numbers....

Summary:

Dry weather returns today through the weekend.  It will be a little breezy this weekend with highs in the 40's and 50's.  Next week several waves will move through the Pacific NW.  Monday a system may push far enough South for some clouds and a passing shower.  Then the ridge of high pressure rebuilds along the West Coast as a trough pushes into the Eastern Pacific.  Some model runs hint that the trough will be able to push into the West Coast the weekend of the 7th, but not much confidence in that right now.

Details:

Here are the ski resort reports from the weak system that moved through yesterday.  You can also get the reports on our Reports Page.

reports

This will be the one and only day of snowfall reports posted for this January.  Looking back at the last several years we had 3 days of reports last year, 6 January 2013, 5 January 2012, and 6 days January 2011.  We picked up close to an inch here at the office on Donner Summit.  This should be the lowest snowfall for January recorded on Donner Summit at the snow lab for at least the last 45 years.  I only have the data by day back to 1970.  1991 had only 8 inches.

I created a graph of the 10 least snowy seasons to compare this season to so far.  We are still slightly ahead of last year with the snow we saw in December, and ahead of the least snowy season of 76-77.

least snowy seasons

I have also been tracking the resort snowfall as an average of their seasonal averages up top, against the percentage of the way through the season so far.  These are not official numbers and have nothing to do with the snowpack numbers we will review at the end of the month.  These are just me being nerdy and analyzing snow and numbers, my 2 loves.  We were 7% behind at the end of December.

season to date

February and March have been our 2 snowiest months on average the last 10 years, with March being the snowiest month.  So we aren't out of the woods yet.  We saw huge comebacks after a long dry spell in 2006 and 2011.  But the trough wanted to hang around the West Coast in 2011 with the cold pool of water off the coast, as opposed to the ridge hanging around the past 2 years with the warm pool.

This 4 year period of below average snowfall is no where near the longest stretch of below average seasons.  We saw 8 years in a row from 1924 to 1931.

dry speall

A series of waves will move through the Pacific NW next week and we may get brushed on Monday but not expecting more than a possible dusting on the mountains.  Then the ridge builds up the West Coast again as a trough pushes in to the Eastern Pacific.

Long-Range:

For days the GFS was trying to push the trough into the ridge near the West Coast the weekend of the 7th.  It has back off on the idea in recent runs but the Canadian and European models are trying to do the same the last 24 hours.

canadian

This is a strong ridge that will not be easy to move, so I'm not sure we should have much faith yet the trough will be able to move, breakdown, or flatten the ridge on its first try next weekend before it weakens.  I think a better chance mid-month after it reloads and tries again.  The deep trough and cold in the East may shift out and the ridge may be weaker by then.  But we should at least watch for the possibility of some precip the weekend of the 7th with all of the models now hinting some precip could break in.

Musings:

The last time we had a decent snowfall on the mountains was the 3rd week of December, the day before Powder Chef my snow reporter broke his tib & fib.  Thinking that could be part of the curse this season.  What will be telling of the long dry spell this Winter will be if he is back on skis by the time we get the next decent snowfall.  He is already back walking with cane and itching to get on skis with his new titanium leg.  We are going to the sneak peak party at the new Hard Rock Casino this afternoon, so I will get an update.

Meanwhile, he has switched to monitoring the comments on the blog and the Facebook Page for questions I can answer.  The whole point of tahoeweatherdiscussion.com was to discuss with other snow nerds the forecasts, but it never really turned into that.  I love when people tracking post things people discuss in the comments.  If you don't read them you should below the post or on Facebook.  They can be pretty amusing at times.  Most days I'm too busy to read them all, but other days like yesterday I am up at night trying to find the next storm and posting a lot to Facebook.   I sometimes get roped in.  

Every year as I get older I realize how finite I am.  I blew out my back lifting a bag of cement at Ace last Fall.  I'm not sure what they gave me at the hospital but only remember these things the next few days including Thanksgiving:  being in the passenger seat talking to an officer, my wife showing me a stick and saying she was pregnant, lying on the floor outside the shower with the curtain and rod on top of me, and afterwards family telling me I was calling them telling them I loved them.  Then I tore my ACL catching a fly ball in softball last summer.  Most recently I heard a pop in my shoulder taking off my shirt and now can't reach above my head or sleep on my left side.  I'm not sure things get any better in future years....  

My point is that these bodies won't last forever and can fail at anytime.  Reading some of the comments and anger about the lack of snow I can't comprehend letting this dry spell ruin your life.  There are a lot bigger things in the world to worry about.  Life is too short to be angry about things all the time.  Get out and enjoy all the great things there are to enjoy everyday...

Oh yea I almost forgot.  You bugged us long enough and we have expanded our mountain forecast borders into Canada!  Check out the Forecast Page.

canada

We continue to try and make the auto forecasting more accurate for all the mountains and Joel has been creating blends of the model runs for the forecasts.  We have also been working with Weatherbell to make the pinpoint mountain top elevation snowfall forecasts more accurate on the models.  Now we just need snow to forecast!

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.

Free OpenSnow App