Hello fellow readers. It's been a little while since I've posted. It's good to be back posting for you. Our season is just getting started down here in Southern California I know we've seen a couple small storms come through that have dropped a couple inches or so on the highest peaks, but certainly nothing of significance at any of the resorts at the bases. 

In terms of what of what to expect this coming week.. unfortunately I can't say there's much in the way of precipitation and especially of the frozen variety... ie snow! Check out the Bear Mountain Forecast from OpenSnow:

I would like to remind everyone that OpenSnow has a proprietary blend of models that creates this forecast. This it not one single model or even a single model run so you're really getting a specialized product to better help you find out where it's going to snow! Please consider upgrading or subscribing to All-Access to see this amazing product among many others. 

Anyways... no snow in the forecast or really any rain for that through this whole week. Temps will be fairly warm.. in the mid to upper 50'sF at the 8k Foot level during the day and they don't seem to drop below about 40F at night.. so snowmaking is likely to be limited as well. 

In terms of what to expect after this week... there really as of now isn't going to be much of a difference in the sensible weather. Very little precipitation is expected and temps are likely to stay moderate. Here's the Ensemble Mean run of the GFS going out to November 16:

You can really see there is very little precipitation reaching down to SoCal through the next 2 weeks. The storm just like it did most of last year favor the Pacific Northwest. 

Here's the Euro going out through the 15th of November showing a very similar story:

It paints a tiny bit more moisture but very little in terms of a significant storm coming in. I would like to remind everyone that these ensemble mean runs are the average of dozens of individual model runs. We really need to look at averages when we're going beyond 5 days since any individual run can be vastly different from the next. In our case... unfortunately they all are dry or just about. 

Seasonal Outlook:

I'm not going to get too deep into what I think will happen this season as that is always a toss up. It is very hard to predict the weather 5 days out let alone 5 months out. But with that said all of the predictions for this winter are showing a Weak to Moderate La Nina. Last year we had a moderate La Nina and we finished with below average precip for the region but several resorts actually average to a very decent winter because of the massive January storm that came through. It is likely we will see more of the same with maybe a slightly higher chance of getting a higher percentage of average for precipitation. How that equates to snow will be tricky... 

Here is a great graphic showing the relationship between the ENSO cycles and the average precipitation across the entire Southern California Coastal and somewhat inland region:

This is courtesy of WRCC, the Western Regional Climate Center. This is between 1933 and 2020. As you can see the region is favored by El Nino's much more so than La Nina's which is expected for Southern California as a whole. But even weak La Nina's as indicated by several of the blue dots have precipitation that's close to average for all ENSO cycles including neutral. What this means is that in a weak La Nina it really can go both ways for us in SoCal at least in terms of precipitation. We'll just have to see what this winter brings for us! Stay tuned with me for the latest updates forecasts for the region. 

Till the next one...Mike out.