Storm Update:

It's a snowy morning here in the Tahoe Basin. Here is a look at the base of Sierra at Tahoe this morning where they are reporting a 24-hour total of 14 inches this morning.

Looking back at the storm over the past 24 hours I don't see many surprises. The storm seems to have pretty much played out close to what we were expecting. Snow levels Saturday dropped into the 6500-7000 ft. range. I was at Alpine meadows and wet snow was falling at the base most of the afternoon. Then snow levels fell to lake level in the 5-8 PM timeframe as we were expecting. They bottomed out around 5500 feet overnight.

We saw off and on bands of heavier rain/snow showers throughout the day. Then a band of heavier snow moved through during the evening with the cold front. Snow showers fired up over the Tahoe Basin overnight, hitting some areas harder than others.

We were expecting an additional 13-23 inches for the upper mountains around the Tahoe Basin, and 3-9 inches for lake level. It looks like we picked up the lower end of both. The ski resorts this morning around the lake are reporting 12-18 inches of new snow. The ski resorts that report base amounts are reporting a range of 4-15 inches this morning. Comment the totals at your house at the bottom.

That brings the storm totals for the upper mountains to 14-28 inches so far. The hardest-hit areas have been on the north and east sides of the lake, with slightly lesser amounts south and southwest of the lake.

Season totals are now over 100" at half of the ski resorts. Not too bad for December 8th. Averaging all of the ski resorts together we are around 138% of the average for the date and have picked up 23% of the seasonal averages so far.

Sunday:

We have lingering snow showers this morning but they will dissipate through the morning.

We could see a coating up to 3 inches of final snowfall this morning before the storm completely clears out. The best chance being west of the lake up along the crest. Winds are still gusting to 40+ mph this morning over the ridges but will come down through the day. We should see some sun into the afternoon with highs in the 30s. A beautiful day on the mountains.

What's Next?

High-pressure builds in over CA briefly Monday and Tuesday. We will have sunny skies and highs in the 40s. That will make the fresh snow wet pretty quickly on the mountains, but now we have a good base, especially on the upper mountains. A dramatic change from the dirt 12 days ago.

The drier weather is expected to last into Thursday, except for a weak system moving through Tuesday night that we have been talking about. We could see some light snow showers Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning that could drop a dusting up to an inch of snow on the mountains. The snow levels drop below lake level, so we could see a few flakes down at the lake as well.

Then back to partly sunny skies Wednesday into Thursday with highs in the 40s at lake level and 30s for the higher elevations.

Friday-Saturday Storm:

Yesterday I went through the GFS and Canadian models showing an AR that will bring rain to CA possibly pushing farther south into Tahoe by Saturday. The European model is now on board and is showing precipitation as far south as Tahoe by Thursday night. This is a warm system with a nice warm moisture feed.

The GFS model runs keep the moisture to our north until Friday night - Saturday. If we do see precipitation push in Thursday night into Friday it looks lighter with the moisture stream pointed to our north. We are also on the warm side with snow levels above 8,000 feet, so this would be mainly a light rain event into Friday night. Then on Saturday as the jet stream shifts south we may see a brief period of heavier precipitation and falling snow levels.

We have all week to track this system. Definitely nothing set in stone yet this far out.

We have been talking about the pattern possibly changing the 3rd week of December. The long-range models this morning are still in good agreement on that change. They all show us shifting from a positive PNA (Pacific North American) pattern this upcoming week, to a negative PNA pattern beyond mid-month.

That would suggest we see a Western trough and colder pattern.

It can also open the door to colder/drier storms dropping down from the Gulf of Alaska, and maybe some colder/wetter systems. The fantasy-range models show this pattern possibly continuing into Christmas week.

We will definitely be keeping an eye on this potential pattern change. Hopefully, we can see a few cold storms before the holidays. In the meantime, I'm going to try and catch up on sleep this week after the long 2 weeks of storms we just had, so that I'm ready for the next round.

Stay tuned...BA

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