Monday Storm Recap:

It was a wet and windy day on Monday as expected. A lot of comments came in about how wet it was and we warned it would be wet and windy the last several days, including on Friday suggesting you may want to head home early on Sunday from the holiday weekend. 

The forecast yesterday morning was for snow levels to top out around 7000-8000 ft. from north to south across the Tahoe Basin. Based on reader reports it sounds like they may have topped out about 500' higher than that by midday Monday, and then colder air moved in through the afternoon with a few flakes falling in Truckee by evening. 

The snow levels sitting a tad higher than forecast put the accumulating snowfall near to just above the measuring locations at the ski resorts. Depending on the elevation we saw 0 up to 2 inches of wet snow accumulate Monday. Then later Monday evening a final band of snow popped up NW of the lake from Sugar Bowl down to Homewood and dropped 1-2 final inches of snow on those mountains.

Squaw picked up 2 inches putting them at 4 inches for the past 24 hours and a 2-day storm total for this system of 6 inches above 8k. The rest of the mountains measured 0-2 inches in the past 24 hours and storm totals of 0-3 inches depending on elevation. 5-day totals of 17-31 inches on the upper mountains but the rain melted some of that on the lower mountains Monday.

The final forecast put out Sunday morning for the Monday storm was for 1-7 inches of snow on the upper mountains. The reported storm totals came in at 0-6 inches. 6 mountains came in on forecast, with 5 mountains coming in 1 inch under the low end of the forecast, and then the 3 mountains farthest south from Kirkwood down to Dodge Ridge coming in 2-3 inches under with the showers fizzling out to the south and the warmer air keeping snow levels a bit higher down there.

The first 2 storms were overproducers with all the variances being mountains coming in over the forecast, and then the reverse for this storm with all of the variances being mountains coming in under the forecast due to warmer air. Cold air is our friend.

Tuesday - Wednesday Forecast:

The winds dropped off quickly early Tuesday morning. The skies are clearing with partly to mostly sunny skies expected Tuesday into Wednesday. It will be a little chilly with highs in the 30s.

The ridgetop winds may only gust up to 30+ mph from the northwest Tuesday with the jet stream a bit weaker and farther east than previously forecast, but then picking up a bit for Tuesday just to our northeast Wednesday, so we may see northwest winds turning more northerly and gusting 40-50+ mph over the ridges.

Thursday Night - Saturday System:

Thursday may start out partly sunny, but then we could see increasing clouds into the afternoon ahead of the next system moving in. It will be slightly warmer with highs into the 40s at lake level. Ridgetop winds shifting to the southwest and gusting 30-40+ mph, maybe increasing a bit more by the end of the day.

The forecast models diverge greatly this morning on what happens with the 2 pieces of the next storm moving in Thursday evening and possibly lasting into Saturday morning before clearing out by Saturday afternoon. A decent slug of moisture pushes into northwest CA Thursday and then weakens as it moves south through the northern Sierra Thursday night into Friday.

Some models like the GFS have the moisture plume bringing heavier precip as far south as the Tahoe basin while other models like the ICON & European taper the precip amounts quickly from Tahoe south. Snow levels are high with this first part of teh storm, possibly starting out around 7500-8000 ft. Thursday night and only dropping to 7000-7500 ft. Friday. So even if we trend wetter it may be mostly rain on the lower mountains.

Then the cold front moves through Friday night with a 2nd wave diving into the trough into northern CA. That may bring another round of steady precip, but the question will be how far south does the 2nd wave track?

The GFS model once again is wetter with a farther south track, and the ICON model is driest with a farther north track. It could be a could time to test the new GFS v16 model that is showing a drier scenario than the old GFS. With the snow showers Friday night into Saturday morning snow levels fall pretty low with the cold front, dropping snow levels as low as 3000 ft. Friday night into Saturday morning, so expecting all snow with this half of the storm.

The range is very big between the models. We have the ICON model showing only up to 0.15 inches of total precipitation on the high end along the crest...

...while the GFS model shows up to 1.75 inches NW of the lake with a bullseye near Donner Summit.

The GFS model looks to be an outlier right now with the rest of the models in a range of 0.3 - 0.8 inches. The average this morning is 0.67 inches near the crest and up to 0.4 inches to the east side of the lake.

The difference between the ICON & GFS model would be 2 inches of snow vs 21 inches on the high end west of the lake along the crest. It would be a bigger variance than that, but with high snow levels, rain, and low snow ratios for the first half of the storm, the variance is less. We could see wet snow above 7000 ft. through Friday and then drier snow Friday night into Saturday morning with snow ratios rising to 12-15:1 or better. Here is the updated snowfall forecast.

We obviously have some details to iron out over the next 2 days. A 1.6-inch range on the total precipitation forecasts makes for good times as a forecaster... Ridgetop winds may be gusting to 70+ mph Friday. So don't say I didn't warn you about another wet and windy day on the mountains.

Sunday:

We clear out for Sunday with high-pressure building in. We should see mostly sunny skies and lighter winds. Highs into the 30s on the upper mountains and 40s at lake level.

Early next week high pressure continues to build over CA with the ridge centered just off the coast. That will continue the dry pattern and highs will be warming into the 40s on the upper mountains and 50s at lake level.

Fantasy Range:

The long-range models still show the ridge shifting northwest away from the West Coast the last few days of the month into the first few days of March. But the trend on the latest model runs is for the ridge to sit a bit closer to the coast with the trough digging into the Western U.S., and CA is on the western edge of the trough.

That may limit the chance for any storms to dig down off the coast and to draw in moisture for a wetter storm to hit northern CA. It would suggest a pattern that is colder but with systems that may be drier as they track down from the north.

The long-range ensemble runs show increasing precip chances from the 26th - 3rd even if some of the deterministic model runs are flip-flopping on specific storms. We will be watching closely to see if this pattern shift will bring us more snow.

I'm getting a little nervous if we don't see the pattern open up more in March. We are only averaging 45% of the season totals on the ski resorts as of this morning. March & April usually only account for 28% of the seasonal snowfall. That only gets us to 71% of average if we even see average snowfall months. We need to open up the pattern to bigger storms as we go into the last 3rd of the season.

Stay tuned...BA

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