We have seen beautiful weather over the last several days with sunny skies and highs near 70 degrees at lake level. That is going to change with a slight cool-down Thursday and a dramatic cool down over the weekend.

A weak and dry front moves through for Thursday with a slight cool-down. Highs only in the 60s for lake level and 50s for the upper elevations. Then a stronger cold front moves through over the weekend. The winds pick up Saturday with ridgetop gusts to 40+ mph and highs in the 50s, then highs dropping into the low 40s for Sunday and Monday with a cold north breeze.

The trough is digging south and west into the Western U.S. when systems track in this direction they are typically pretty dry for the Sierra.

The Canadian model and some of the ensemble runs of the models are trying to hang onto some very light precipitation Sunday. You can see for the ski resorts on the right sidebar they show the best chance of a dusting on the mountains on the east and south sides of the lake.

The trend on most models however is towards a completely dry scenario like on the latest GFS forecast model run below.

The biggest story of the weekend is expected to be the much colder temperatures making it feel like fall! Highs only in the 20s for the higher elevations by Sunday, and overnight lows well below freezing down to lake level.

Unfortunately for snow lovers like you and me, it looks like high pressure will be building back in over the West next week. That will bring a continuation of a prolonged dry pattern, and temperatures will warm back into the 60s.

Looking at the uber long-range models, they show that storm activity could pick back up again for the Pacific NW near the end of the month and into the first week of November. But they show most of the storms staying to our north. We usually see storms dig farther south as we get later into November. 

Until we see storms we should at least hope for colder temperatures at night so that the mountains can fire up their snow guns in November. Until the storms get ramped up we will continue to be working on new product development.

This morning I released the Introductory Episode to a new weekly podcast series that I'm starting called the The Flakes Podcast. Take a listen and let us know what you think. Keep in mind that I'm new to this and to editing. I'm still working on the official artwork. We will start recording weekly shows once the ski season starts, and will also publish them to multiple media outlets for listening.

The OpenSnow team is still hard at work getting the new features launched in time for winter, like the new "Maps" page link located at the top of this page. We are also excited to announce the new All-Access "Group" subscription, which will come with a price increase to our current All-Access "Single" subscription on Nov 1st. If you’re thinking about upgrading to All-Access, lock in our lower price now of $19/year through October 31, 2020. Upgrade to All-Access and let us work directly for you!

Stay tuned...BA