Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 3 years ago February 26, 2021

Sunny & Breezy Weekend...

Summary

We have a dry pattern through the weekend. We will cool down slightly Saturday. Gusty winds possible at times through the period. There is a minimal chance for light precipitation early next week. Overall we should see dry weather continue with the next storm moving in the weekend of the 6th.

Short Term Forecast

This will be a short post as it looks like we have 1 more week until we see any significant precipitation/snowfall. Pretty boring for snow lovers like me and you. We have plenty of snow on the mountains for skiing and the weather has been beautiful.

hw

That is the view over the lake this morning from Homewood ski resort. We could see a few clouds later today (Friday) as the dry cold front moves through. Highs in the 40s at lake level today and 30s above 8000 ft. Winds are light this morning but will increase into the afternoon, with ridgetop winds up to 70+ mph this afternoon from the west.

The Weekend:

Behind the front, we have slightly colder air for Saturday with highs in the 30s down to lake level. The mostly sunny skies continue, but so do the gusty winds. The winds will turn more northerly Saturday and still gusting up to 70+ mph over the ridges. It will be a chilly day on the mountains.

Saturday night the northeast winds could become stronger, but then coming down through the day on Sunday. Highs warming into the 40s at lake level.

Monday - Thursday:

The forecast models still do not agree on what happens with the next system approaching the West Coast next week, but it may not matter much. There is good agreement on the system splitting off the coast. A cut-off low may spin up and move south well off the coast.

The trend this morning is for the northern part of the system to stay well to our north now, and not dip into northern CA Monday night with light snow. Some models have the low off the coast moving inland Wed-Thu, but into far southern CA with no precipitation reaching this far north.

Therefore, almost all of the scenarios this morning look to keep us fairly dry Monday through Thursday. We may just see a continuation of mostly sunny skies with highs warming into the 40s and maybe even 50s by midweek. We will keep an eye on the trends just in case they shift back to showing the possibility of light precipitation.

Extended Forecast

There is still good agreement among the long-range models that we see a pattern change by the end of next week, with a trough digging into the West Coast and possibly staying there for a while. Here is a look at the height anomaly forecast for Sunday the 14th, over a week after the initial trough next weekend.

trough

There is still good agreement that the first storm could push into CA next Friday-Saturday. It's too early to look at the details yet, but we will take any storms at this point.

storm next weekend

You can see the next upstream system dropping into the trough behind that system. If this pattern sets up the way the models are showing, we could see several systems spin up into the trough and move into CA through the 2nd week of March. The long-range ensemble models continue to show increased precipitation from the 6th-14th.

cmc

Let's hope this positive sign in the long-range pattern continues. I need several more powder days before I hang up the equipment for the season.

Stay tuned...BA

Announcements

On this week's episode of The Flakes Podcast, we talk to Evan Thayer about the amazing skiing after Interlodge at Alta, and having respect for ski patrol. Plus we go through the 5-day snowfall reports & forecasts for each ski state!

Listen via Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.)

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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