Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 10 years ago January 13, 2014

Summary:

Ridge of high pressure along the West Coast will keep things dry this week.  Strong jet stream across the Pacific week 2 will help to pump the ridge along the West Coast keeping things dry.  No storms in sight for CA in the long-range.

Details:

Since I didn't post yesterday I still need to report the snowfall totals from Saturday.  Just about every ski resort reported 3-4 inches, except 5 at Sugar Bowl and 2 at Sierra.  The ridge has built back in this week and dry conditions have returned.  The European model runs still tried to bring a system into CA this Sunday during yesterday's runs but they gave up on that today.

Long Range:

The GFS kept showing the jet stream extending across the Pacific and punching the through the ridge into CA next week.  But I kept saying confidence is low because the other forecast models don't agree, and the pattern over the North Pacific argues for a ridge to continue along the West Coast.  Yesterday the GFS finally threw in the towel and agreed with the other models.  The strong jet stream won't extend far enough to break through the ridge and will actually help to pump the ridge up the West Coast keeping the storms away from the entire West Coast through next week.

I do have a confession to make.  I couldn't stand to look at my new powder board in the package anymore so I tracked down where some good powder may be within driving distance yesterday.  I knew that Utah had picked up several storms the past week and were expecting another 12-18 inches Saturday night into Sunday.  I also had a friend I hadn't seen in a couple of years that was in Salt Lake for work this week.  After work on Saturday I jumped in the car and drove all night in the snow to Park City.  I spent the entire day yesterday riding a foot+ of fresh powder, and the snow fell the entire day and into the night.  Between the snow Saturday in Tahoe and then yesterday here I saw snow falling from the sky for about 36 hours straight.  I'm feeling much better now and it should help my mind a little as we prepare to go through another 2 weeks without any snow.

The climate models blew the forecast for January.  Although they were forecasting below average snow in January back in December, they were forecasting more than 3-4 inches for the month.  It looks like we will end the month on track with the 2 driest snowfall seasons of the past 37 years.  We need to pray for a big change to this pattern in February and March to change that.  For now the cold and snow will stay over the Eastern U.S. where it has been living this Winter.  When Winter relaxes in the East later in the season during February and March when they have a cold Winter there, we tend to see storms increase for the West.  That could be one of the reasons why historically February and March are the snowiest months during seasons with low snowfall for CA during the first half of the Winter.  Remember, the 2 most recent seasons with this dry of a start had both the largest February and largest March on record the past 45 years on Donner Summit.  February of 1991 had 144 inches and March of 2001 had 201 inches.  We need a month like that in the next 2 months.

Stay tuned...BA

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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