The snow levels came up yesterday morning and then dropped again during the afternoon.  We had heavy snow into Truckee later in the afternoon and to all lake level locations.  Then the snow levels came up during the evening just above lake level like we were thinking they might.  BUT... the cold front didn't push through before the precip ended early this morning, so snow levels never made it back down below lake level.  

I was driving around yesterday afternoon and there was a couple inches in Truckee with heavy snow.  Then at the base of squaw there looked to be about 18 inches on the ground.  Their snowfall totals for the base are being reported at 20 inches for the last 2 days.  Then down to Tahoe City where several inches were on the ground.  I drove over to Incline where it was snowing with a couple of inches on the ground as well.  So there was definitely a dramatic difference in snowfall West of highway 89 as compared to other areas around the lake.

For the mountains, they picked up another 11-28 inches in the past 24 hours.  That brought the tally to some impressive totals of 2-5 feet for the weekend.  The totals for 10 days reached over 100 inches Northwest of the lake where the storms have been hitting the hardest.  Some resorts have now surpassed their seasonal averages.

Taking the average of all the ski resorts we are at 94.7% of average seasonal snowfall up top.  We are about 75% of the way through the season with most ski resorts normally closing around the 3rd weekend in April.  Some may stay open longer if we get more snow.

When I post the keep me honest graph for a multi-day storm series i usually use the final forecast that came out for the period before the first flake fell.

The glaring difference to forecast is the big totals that came in Saturday night Northwest of the lake that were about double the forecast.  That pushed the mountains NW of the lake 8-21 inches over forecast.  The East side of the lake did a little better than forecast this time as well, with the European model being correct with more spillover to the East side.  Southwest of the lake the mountains picked up within the forecast range.

The winds are still cranking this morning as the cold front is still moving through.  But the moisture has shallowed out and the snowfall has ended.  Gusts of 50+ mph today will start to wind down tonight into Tuesday.  Temperatures will stay chilly with highs in the 40's through Wednesday.

High pressure is building in and we will warm into the 50's at lake level by the end of the week and into the weekend.

Storms look like they will return to the Pacific NW next weekend and beyond with a ridge off the CA coast keeping the precip to our North.  We could still see some light precip reach the Tahoe basin next Sunday but not enough for a snowfall forecast.  Another shot is possible the following Tuesday and I have added that to the 10 day snowfall forecasts on the resort pages.  For now we will just watch to see if any storms will make it this far South over the next 2 weeks.

Stay tuned...BA