Summary:

The winds have picked up this morning and light rain showers are moving into the area.  This afternoon into Friday heavier rain showers will move through the area.

Some lingering showers are possible on Saturday before the next storm moves in Sunday.  This storm is colder and could bring a foot or more of snowfall to the mountains and a coating of snow as low as lake level by Sunday afternoon.

Next week the weather remains unsettled but it looks like most of the storms will stay to our North as high pressure builds over the area.

Details:

The Warm Storm:

Still not much change to the forecast over the week.  We have a low approaching this morning bringing strong mountain top winds.  It will draw up subtropical moisture that will arrive later today into Friday.

You can see on the radar the moisture lifting up from the South on Friday and then clearing on Saturday, before you see precip from the Sunday storm approaching from the NW.

Here is the GFS total precip forecast through Friday.  It is lining up pretty close to the other forecast models.

We could see a half inch up to an inch of rain across the Tahoe basin.  There is shadowing by the Sierra Crest as the winds are from the South, but still plenty of rain.  Snow levels tonight start around 11,000 feet before falling near 9,000 feet on Friday.

The Colder Storm:

We may not have much of a break on Saturday as we could see scattered showers ahead of the next approaching storm.  The next storm moves in pretty quickly Saturday night, with the heaviest precip arriving by early Sunday morning.  The snow levels are near 7,000 feet by Sunday morning.

The precip tapers off by Sunday night with snow levels dipping near lake level by Sunday afternoon.  Here is the GFS total precip forecast through Sunday.  You can see we add another inch of liquid over the basin, and possibly 1.5 inches along the crest.

Snowfall:

Where we are confident it is all snow above 8000 feet we could see 6-12 inches around the lake, and 12-18 inches along the crest.  Above 7000 feet most of the storm should be snow.  We could see 3-9 inches around the lake, and 6-12 inches west of the lake along the crest.  7,000 feet down to lake level and even down to 6,000 feet close to Truckee elevation, we could see a little coating at the end up to maybe a couple of inches in the higher hills.

Monday we should wake up to clearing skies and white mountains!  If we can get at least 2.37 inches of liquid on Donner Summit this weekend it will be the wettest October in over 50 years.  It may be close.  Going back to 1870 we are rivaling the third spot.

Next Week:

The European model still shows some light snow possible with a weaker storm moving through on Tuesday.  The trend on the GFS model is to split the system with the precip diving to our South into Southern CA.

After that the trend is for high pressure to build over CA as the Eastern Pacific trough retreats a bit.  The storm track may stay to our North into next weekend.  You can see on the GFS forecast through next weekend that precip amounts continue to pile up in Northern CA, but not reaching the Tahoe basin.

Long-Range:

As I mentioned in the last post the climate models are showing a drier November, especially compared to October.  The trend on the ensemble runs of the models has been to shift the Eastern Pacific trough further West with time and on each run.  That may keep the storm track well to our North into mid-November.  

Let's hope that is not the case and we can get more storms.  The GFS ensemble control run and the operation GFS on the last couple of runs show several stronger storms week 2, but that is not what the rest of the forecasts are showing.  That doesn't mean we don't get any storms, but at least the first half of November is looking much drier than October right now.

Stay tuned...BA