Yesterday was a good day for skiing if you stayed out of the ridgetop winds.  A fresh blanket of snow for Christmas refreshed the slopes and brought nice views around the lake.

(Homewood 12/25/18)

We picked up a general 6-12 inches on the mountains from the storm.  I posted all the totals yesterday.  Here are a few more stats as of yesterday.  Total snowfall is pacing with the length of the season.  The YTD % of average snowfall is running close to % of average total precip, and snowpack is similar as well.

The good news is that we have more snow than this time last year and it going to stay cold for the next week.  The bad news is that these stats are not going to go up at all in the next 10 days with the dry spell.

High pressure will sit near the West Coast through New Year's Day.  That puts us on the cold side with weak systems dropping down to our east and keeping any precip over Nevada. 

That will bring another shot of cold air Thursday and again New Year's Eve.  The latest trend is for the high pressure to be a little closer to the coast with less of a chance we see any snow showers from the two systems.

I went through all the temperatures in the Summary up top, and the winds.  We will have gusty winds for Thursday, Friday, and Monday.  But in general a dry and cold period through next Tuesday.

High pressure is still forecast to shift over the West the first week of January putting us on the warm side.  So we should continue a dry pattern but with warming temps.

Beyond day 10 (the 5th) the forecast models are all over the place.  Usually a good sign of a pattern change coming and the models trying to pick up on what it will be.  The teleconnection forecasts are inconsistent not helping much other than the MJO forecast to move through the Pacific.

The ensemble mean forecasts still suggest that the strong Pacific jet stream could nose closer to the West Coast with weakening high pressure over the West and strengthening to the north from Alaska into Western Canada.

That could help to force the storm track south into CA sometime during the 2nd week of January.  For now, all we can do it watch the pattern evolve as we get closer.  The GFS ensemble mean run shows increasing precip over CA beyond the 5th.

But that is not showing up yet on the other models through the 9th.  The CFSv2 still shows a wet pattern around the 10th-20th of January.  If you are watching the GFS operational runs you are seeing several storms move into CA pulling in deep subtropical moisture starting the 5th.  But we are not seeing that on the other models yet.  Only 50% of the GFS ensemble members are showing heavier precip for CA through the 9th.

If you live by the rule that the forecast models lose 10% accuracy a day with specific storms, then beyond 10 days they have almost 100% chance of being wrong.  That's why I only look at the potential pattern beyond a week-10 days to see if the pattern we are heading towards could bring storms, but not the specific storms showing up on a model that far out. 

So we just have to do what we get used to here in Tahoe, sit back, relax and wait for solid signs that storms are coming.  I'm on the case!

Stay tuned...BA