Not too much to get into today as we wait for the the first snowfall of the season.  Just some musings.  The posts will start to get more frequent now that we are starting to track the storms coming in off the Pacific.

Two week forecast

Here is the 2 week precip forecast.  Look familiar?  But not all that uncommon for September in CA.

September snow

As we go through the month we will start to see troughs push into the West Coast.  For now any snow stays in the Rockies as high pressure stay along the West Coast.  We do get snow in September.  Here is a graph of September Snowfall.  We saw 29 inches on Donner Summit in 1986, and I remember the 4 inches we got in early September 2007.

La Nina

There are more Winter forecasts coming out.  Most are showing a typical La Nina pattern with a wet Pacific NW and equal chances for above or below average precip for Northern CA.  What is interesting to me is that the forecast is only for a 55% - 60% chance of a weak La Nina developing.  We currently have ENSO neutral conditions and that may continue.  

The Blob

On top of that the warm blob of water in the NE Pacific that we saw during the 14-15 season is back.  So I'm not sure why there is so much certainty on a typical La Nina pattern.

One (unreliable) model's winter forecast

The unreliable CFSv2 climate forecast for Dec-Feb is even more interesting as it shows the wettest weather in Central CA.  Not sure how it is coming up with that.

We will keep watching all of the ingredients coming together and looking for the first snowfall.

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Stay tuned...BA

P.S. you can hit the link below to go to the previous posts.