Shot of Colder Weather:

Another shot of colder air and a small amount of precip will blow through the area on Thursday.

In the last post the ridge off the West Coast looked like it would stay flat and keep the storms into the Pacific NW.  Over the last few days the trend has been for the ridge to shift West slightly allowing a cold trough to push into the Pacific NW and the Rockies, but come far enough South and West to bring much colder temperatures and a chance for showers.

What to Expect:

Highs at lake level will go from the low 70's to near 50 Thursday, and highs in the mountains above 8000 feet may not break 40 degrees.  Not expecting much in the way of precip.  Maybe a shower or two.  Snow levels will be lower than with the last system last week, with snow levels possibly dipping to 7000 feet.  So you may see a few flakes this time.

Here is the GFS total precip forecast.

You can see that some heavier snow could fall to the East over the Rockies.  That will be the bigger story in weather this week.  

What's Next:

By the weekend we will rebound back to the 70's with dry weather.  Still no sign of any significant weather changes in the long-range.  The forecast models are hinting at a pattern change for the first week of October that could allow a stronger storm into the West Coast.  We will keep an eye on that.

Winter:

I think we have gone over enough doom and gloom.  I have put out the ideas of why this Winter may not product a lot of snow.  I normally show those reasons and what I think for Winter, and then it is time to start looking for all of the positive signs that could bring us snow.  

So for today I will post this map.  It is a comparison of the sea surface temp anomalies for 2005 versus now.  Not as similar as 2014, but they are similar.  We had ENSO neutral that Winter as well, and a warm PDO like we do now. 

That season we saw 426 inches of snowfall reported on Donner Summit as the Snow Lab.  In Winters like this we can see a donut hole of snow in January or February like the last few seasons.  You can see the hole in February that year, follow by a Big March.  Ski resorts saw 200 inches that March up top, and another 100 inches in April.

ENSO neutral Winters can go either way and we will keep watching things develop.  We will have the Opensnow Winter forecasts out in October.  Until then stay positive and pray for snow.

Stay tuned...BA

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