Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 5 years ago January 11, 2019

Snow Is Coming, but Low Confidence on Amounts...

Summary

- We will see some sun and clouds Friday through Sunday with highs in the 30's. Ridgetop wind gusts of 25-35 mph. - Light snow from the next system could push in on Monday. We could see light snow Monday through Monday night with light snowfall accumulations. - The forecast models are split on whether the next system for Tuesday into Tuesday night brings more light snowfall or heavier snowfall amounts. There is better agreement on heavy snow with the 3rd system for Wednesday night into Thursday. We could see significant accumulations by Friday morning. - After a break next Friday we could see a final storm move through Saturday. Then we are expecting a drier pattern to build in starting around the 20th through the last week of January.

Short Term Forecast

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  Fresh snow, lots of sun, light winds, and highs in the 30's.  The lake looks better surrounded by white in my opinion.

lake snow

(Homewood 1/6/19)

That weather will continue into the weekend but we could see some clouds as storms move through to our west and south missing us.  Temperatures could cool a few degrees for Saturday into Sunday.  It will be a little breezy on the mountain tops, but gusts look to only be around 25-35 mph.

The Storms:

What a headache this morning as the forecast models are in less agreement for Monday-Tuesday than they were the last 2 days.  There is better agreement days 6-10 than there is for days 4-5. 

There is agreement that the system approaching the coast Sunday is slower to push in precipitation, with most model runs now keeping us dry through Sunday night.  Then pushing some light precip in Monday into Monday night as the system pushes inland over Southern CA.

system monday

The disagreement for Monday is that now some of the forecast models like the European are bringing the system inland further south with not much moisture pushing up towards Tahoe.  Other models including the GFS push light precip amounts north into the area.  Taking the average of the 2 scenarios we could see an inch or two of snow Monday and again Monday night, with the best chance for higher end accumulations on the south side of the lake.

south side

If the trend is towards a track further south we could see less, further north and we could see slightly more snowfall.  Snow levels look to be around 4,000-5,000 feet.

2nd System:

Even more disagreement this morning with the 2nd system pushing in for Tuesday into Tuesday night.  There is agreement that the next system pushes in a bit further north with a better chance for snowfall over Tahoe, but there is a very wide range on the total precipitation forecast. The Canadian model has less than 4 tenths of an inch of total precipitation near the crest, while the GFS has close to 3 inches!

The GFS continues to have model runs that show this system tapping quite a bit of moisture as an AR (atmospheric river) makes landfall along the central/southern CA coast.  I am not comfortable attempting to make a forecast when some models have a few inches of snow and others have 1-2 feet.  The GFS ensemble mean run is only at 8 tenths of an inch, with the majority of models averaging the same if you take out the GFS run. 

gfs ensembles

So, for now, I would expect several inches of snow possible Tuesday into Tuesday night.  Hopefully, we can get more agreement by tomorrow and try to come up with a forecast that has some confidence other than the confidence that it will be snowing.  Snow levels look to be around 4,000-5,000 feet.

3rd System:

Wednesday looks like it will be an in-between day with snow possibly lingering into the morning, and then snow possibly increasing again in the afternoon as the next storm moves in.

Much better agreement for the 3rd system moving in by Wednesday night and possibly lasting into Thursday night before winding down.  This storm has the jet stream pushing into central CA and is tapping quite a bit of moisture off the Pacific.

strong jet

If the current forecast continues to hold, this storm should bring high winds and heavy snow.  It's too early to discuss snowfall details, but we have the 10-day forecasts on the ski resort pages.  This storm would be measured in feet not inches if the current forecast holds.  Snow levels currently look to be below lake level for the entire storm.

Extended Forecast

There is decent agreement on models a week from now that we could see a break in the storms next Friday.  Then we could possibly see a final storm Saturday the 19th.  The long-range models show different scenarios for this storm.  Some models show it moving through to our north brushing us with light snowfall, and other show another hit of high winds and heavy snow.

The storms for the beginning of the week focus most of the precip into Southern CA, but later in the week, they are focusing the precip further north.  Overall it should be a good week for total precipitation in the state of California.

10 day precip

Looking at the teleconnections and long-range ensemble runs, the long-range pattern still looks like it changes to a dry pattern starting the 20th through the last week of January.  We should see a high-pressure ridge over the west with dry and milder air, and a trough over the East with lots of cold air.

ridge

The CFSv2 for the last 10 days of January has a well below average precipitation anomaly for CA.

below average precip 

Here are the latest stats after the last storm.  

stats

With the storms next week I'm hoping we can get to average for the season and above average for the month of January before we head into a drier pattern.

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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