The mountains have continued to make snow at night this week with the dry cold air.  Heavenly, Northstar, and Squaw are all planning to open a trail or two for the weekend.  That would bring us to 5 ski resorts open so far.

The cool dry weather continues through the weekend.  Then we have been talking for a while now about the pattern change for next week that could bring us some storms.  We finally have some storms now showing up in the 1-week window.  

There has been enough consistency with the storms the last couple of days that confidence is starting to build that we could at least see some precip next week.  It's the details that are changing run to run of the forecast models. 

It looks like there could be an initial trough pushing in sometime Tuesday-Thursday bringing some precip, and then possibly subsequent systems behind that into Thanksgiving weekend.

The European model is the earliest with the arrival of the trough on Tuesday and then a subsequent system next Friday.  But the Euro has less moisture with the trough not digging as deep down the coast. 

The GFS model runs for the past day have shown the trough pushing in Wednesday night and a 2nd wave of heavier snowfall pushing in Friday.  The latest 12z GFS run has flipped dry again, so we will have to see if that is just a throw-away run. 

These storms have cold air as they drop in from the North Pacific. So if we do see some decent moisture push in next week, it would likely be mostly snow. 

We are just on the edge of the 1-week window.  So for today, I'm just going to leave it at the confidence was building that we could at least see a weak storm or 2 next week, but we need continued consistency on the model runs to get more details, not a flip to dry like the latest GFS run.

Looking at the long-range forecast for the pattern, the GFS runs want to keep a trough near the West Coast which would keep the storm door open.  

But the European model runs suggest a ridge rebuilds after Thanksgiving weekend.  

For now, we are just focused on trying to get the first storms of the season next week.  Let's hope the forecast continues to trend towards a stormy pattern next week.

Stay tuned...BA

What are you doing this weekend?  Every year Snowbomb puts on ski shows to help you get geared up for season.  There is only 1 show left!  It's this Saturday & Sunday in Sacramento.  I'm planning to be there if I am feeling recovered enough by Saturday!

Exclusive offer for Tahoe readers!  Use code "OpenSnow" to get 50% Off admission!  Click the link below to find out more.

https://opsw.co/Snowbomb18