Tahoe Daily Snow
By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 4 years ago June 4, 2019
Quick Dip and May Stats...
Update
The Forecast:
We have been seeing warm and humid weather with afternoon showers for the last few days. That will continue on Tuesday. We stay warm Wednesday with highs continuing into the 70's.
Thursday a cool dry trough begins to push in. That will bring us cooler air into the weekend. Highs dip into the 60's Thursday and then the 50's Friday into Saturday. We could see some gusty winds Thursday into Friday.
The trough begins to kick east Sunday with temperatures warming back into the 60's. Then high pressure builds in over the West Coast next week with temperatures continuing to warm.
Next week we should warm back into the 70's, and maybe close to 80 at lake level by midweek.
No signs of any storms in the long-range. We may be settling into the dry and warm Summer pattern.
May Stats:
The month of May was a wet and snowy month with both snowfall and total precipitation amounts above average.
For snowfall, we saw 37 inches fall on the upper mountain at Squaw and 23 inches at the Central Sierra Snow Lab in Soda Springs. The average for May at the CSSL is 11 inches. The last time we saw this much snow in May was 2011.
That brings the Oct - May snowfall total to 488 inches
Here is the snowfall by month since 1970. May is now close to October's average.
This was definitely the biggest snowfall season by far after a dry start through December.
For total precipitation, May was close to 7 inches with the average being only around 3 inches.
That continues to push our water year to above average. We have now had 4 above average total precipitation seasons in a row!
That cancels out the 4 dry seasons previous which is why there are currently no drought conditions in CA, only a small abnormally dry zone in the far SW corner near San Diego.
The snowpack is very healthy as well at 216% of the average for June 3rd!
That sets us up well for lots of water flowing going into the Summer. Unfortunately, all of the wet springs we have been seeing have helped to bring lots of greenery that dries out over the summer and helps to fuel summer fires. Let's hope we don't see any major fires this Summer.
Summer Hiking:
Last summer I was posting once a week about the weather and a travel blog about our travels to the National Parks. Last summer we traveled through 33 states to 25 National Parks. So far this Summer we have visited 3 parks. I will post on that next week. We will be visiting 10 more National parks in Utah and Colorado over the next 6 weeks and posting about it.
We will also be using the new OpenSummit app for our hiking forecasts. Last month we launched our new website OpenSummit.com and last week we launched the Android version of the OpenSummit app! Check them out! They give you a high elevation hiking forecast for your favorite peaks with temperatures, wind, precip chances, and lightning chances by the hour. There is also an option to suggest a new peak if you don't see your favorite on there yet.
We also added a lake level forecast today!
Stay tuned...BA
Announcements
Ski Resorts Still Operating:
Squaw - Open every Friday – Sunday now through June 30 and then July 3-7. 8 am – 2 pm