Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 5 years ago January 8, 2019

Impressive Looking Storm, Snowfall Not as Impressive...

Summary

- Tuesday we see a break but the next storm will move in by evening, so expect increasing clouds and winds through the day. The next storm for Tuesday night into Wednesday has snow levels around 7,000 feet falling to 6,500. We could see an additional 1-10 inches of snow on the mountains. Mountaintop winds gusting to 50+ mph from Tuesday evening into Wednesday. - It looks like we could see some sun and lighter winds for Thursday with highs in the 30's. Then clouds could be increasing again on Friday ahead of the next storm. - Over the weekend we have splitting systems moving in Friday night and Saturday night. That should send the storm to our south keeping us fairly dry. We could get brushed with some light snow Sunday night. - We could see the next storm push in around the 17th, but this storm could split as well. Then a drier pattern may finally build in over the West Coast starting the 18th into the last week of January.

Short Term Forecast

Update 5 PM:

The afternoon model runs have trended drier showing more shadowing through tomorrow.  I would lean towards the low end of the forecast.  Remember only half of the forecast below from this mornign falls by Wednesday morning and the other half during the day tomorrow.

Here is a live forecast I did from Mt. Rose this afternoon.

Original Post from 7 AM:

The ski resorts on the west side of the lake are reporting a final 1-3 inches of snow from the light snow showers yesterday morning before the storm completely moved out.  

The next storm off the coast looks impressive on satellite.

satellite

I haven't been hyping the strength of the storm because it won't bring us big snowfall.  The center of the storm will stay well off the coast and move north through Wednesday.  It is going to push a front through on Wednesday so we will see some snow tonight into Wednesday.

The storm is drawing in moisture from all the way back near Hawaii and sending it into northern CA today through Wednesday.

moisture

But with the storm staying off the coast and moving north we will have a prolonged southerly flow over CA which will keep the heavy precip over northern CA from pushing over the mountains and into the Tahoe basin until the front moves through Wednesday morning.

The trick with these storms is to try and figure out how much snow will fall near the crest.  East of the crest gets shadowed out across the Tahoe basin with light amounts possible, but near the crest, the ski resorts like Sugar Bowl, Squaw, Sierra, and Kirkwood are right on the edge of the heavy precip falling to the west.  Here is a look at the NAM model showing only up to 3 tenths of an inch SW of the lake near Sierra at Tahoe.

nam

and here is the WPC model showing up to an inch of total precip...

wpc

You can see that both forecast models have heavy rain to the northwest of Tahoe but differ in how much of that pushes east into our area.  3 tenths of an inch versus an inch is a big difference in snowfall.  The last storm like this a couple weeks ago there were forecasts for up to 2 feet of snow as people were looking at the heavy precip amounts on the west slope and up to Lassen.  I had forecast of 3-8 inches for that storm and most ski resorts on the west side picked up 5 inches.

The range on the models this morning is 0.6 - 1.0 inches of total precip along the crest, and 0.1 - 0.4 on the east side of the lake.  The average near the crest is 0.8, up a little from yesterday.  The snow levels look to be around 7,000 feet when the snow pushes in later tonight after 10 PM and could fall to 6,500 feet Wednesday morning.  It looks like they may not fall to lake level until the end of the storm on Wednesday evening.

Here is the final forecast for this storm.  Only half of this falls by the 6 a.m. mountain reports tomrrow morning.  We will watch the radar during the storm to see how close the heaviest precip can push in on the west side of the lake. 

final forecast

The winds have come down pretty low this morning with gusts on the ridges only to 30 mph.  That should pick up this afternoon closer to 50 mph.  Tonight into Wednesday morning we could see gusts in excess of 60 mph affecting some lifts in the morning, but the jet stream is weaker with this storm and with the center of the storm off the coast the winds don't look to get anywhere near as strong as the last storm.

Splitting Storms:

Thursday we should clear out enough to see some sun.  Clouds could increase on Friday as the next storm approaches the coast.  The temperatures both days look to be in the 30's on the mountains to near 40 at lake level.  The winds look pretty light both days.

The trend on the models for both the Friday night and Sunday storms is to split them off the coast.  With the jet stream diving south into Southern CA both systems look like they will do the same.  So Friday night into Saturday looks pretty dry now. 

friday

For Sunday into Monday we could get a little light snow as moisture tries to push up from the south as the 2nd system moves through Southern CA.

sunday

Then we could have another break in the weather next Tuesday.

Extended Forecast

The high-pressure ridge over the Rockies could shift east a bit by next Wednesday allowing the next trough to push into CA without splitting.  Most of the forecast models had a decent storm for next Wednesday-Thursday the last few days.

trough

But the latest European model runs now show a spitting jet stream off the coast with this storm diving into Southern CA as well.  The GFS model runs still show the trough holding together and pushing a decent storm into CA, but not as wet as previous runs. 

We will have to keep watching the trend as we get closer.  If you have been reading along you know I have been beating the drum about a high-pressure ridge building in over the West Coast the 3rd week of January.  That is where I think the pattern is going, and now most of the long-range ensemble runs are showing it happening starting around the 18th.

The GFS and European ensemble mean runs show the Eastern Pacific trough a little closer to the coast trying to push storms into the West Coast, but I think most of them move in to our north.

gfs

The Canadian ensemble mean runs show the trough even further from the coast with a dry pattern locked in into the last week of January.

ridge GEM

Stay tuned...BA

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About Our Forecaster

Bryan Allegretto

Forecaster

Bryan Allegretto has been writing insightful posts about snow storms for over the last 15 years and is known as Tahoe's go-to snow forecaster. BA grew up in south Jersey, surfing, snowboarding, and chasing down the storms creating the epic conditions for both.

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