The Weather:

The first half of summer featured below-average temperatures in the lower 48, especially in the West.

That is finally changing as high pressure is over the southwestern U.S., but troughs continue to push into the Pacific NW.  That continues to put Tahoe in between the two.  

Temperatures for the next week look to be near average with highs in the 80's in the Tahoe basin.  We have light winds on the lake today, but we may see some stronger gusts from the southwest in the afternoons starting Sunday.  Winds could gust up to 25-30 mph.

We will also have a slight chance for afternoon thunderstorms starting to develop, but the moisture looks limited until later in the week.  We could still see some an isolated afternoon thunderstorm with lightning strikes so keep a heads up if you are hiking in the mountains.  The new upgrade to OpenSummit is helpful with this threat.

Moisture pushing northward through the week may bring a better chance for thunderstorms farther north near Tahoe by mid-week.  But the latest model runs don't show much precip through the week.

The long-range forecasts show the possibility of high-pressure expanding by next weekend.  That could bring drier and hotter weather by the end of the month.

Final Leg of the Trip:

The post is out a couple of days late this week as we were finishing up this Summer's National Park trip.  When we left off last week we were spending time in Boulder with the crew from OpenSnow/OpenSummit.

Last weekend we headed into our last park of the trip, Rocky Mountain National Park.  Heading up in elevation was a nice relief from the hot temperatures in Boulder, but we also saw afternoon heavy rain and thunderstorms every day in the park.  We had to get our hikes in early and then spent the afternoons in the campground watching the rain, lightning, and hail.

It was a beautiful park and we did quite a bit of hiking.  

Our last day we got up early in the morning to go into the park to see the sunrise and all of the animals out in the morning.  Through all of our travels, the moose has been very elusive.  This was our last chance for a while to try and see a moose.  Right before leaving the park we found our moose!

We have now been to 40 parks, 38 in the last 12 months.  Only 21 more to go, if they stop adding them...

The last 2 days we made our treck back home.  We stopped to see the fossils at Dinosaur National Monument,...

...and the Great Salt Lake.

We had a great time hiking for the last month in the 10 National Parks of UT and CO, but we are excited to be back.  Looking forward to hiking around Tahoe for the rest of the summer and writing about the weather as we head towards the next ski season!

Stay tuned...BA