Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 2 years ago July 21, 2021

Summer Drags On...

Summary

Sunny and dry weather continues with some fires around the region. The forecast remains fairly constant through the weekend with temperatures warming.

Update

Typical summer weather continues with slight warm-ups and cooldowns along with dry conditions and afternoon breezes. 

Fires & Smoke:

We saw a fire south of Lake Tahoe (Tamarack Fire) explode in size over the last several days. A little too close for comfort and it did affect some towns to the south like Markleeville and Woodfords.

fire perimeter

There is a bigger fire to the north, east of Chico (Dixie Fire). Both of these larger fires are to our north and south and with the predominant wind direction being southwest most of the smoke has steered clear of the Tahoe Basin. Here is a look at today's smoke forecast map from our OpenSummit site.

smoke

During the summer we get the afternoon Zephyr winds from the southwest most days. Overnight into the morning hours, we can see lighter and more variable winds that allow some smoke to wander into the Tahoe Basin, but then it blows out by the afternoon. Hopefully, no more big fires will be starting up nearby or upstream of our region. If they do we will have our new air quality maps launched this week.

The Forecast:

The weather pattern looks like it will be typical of summer and pretty boring through the weekend. We have sunny skies and temperatures near average through Friday. Highs in the low 80s at lake level and upper 70s out over the colder lake water. Cooler with 60s & 50s if you are hiking to the higher elevations above 8000 ft. You can always check the hourly mountain top forecasts on OpenSummit.

Typical afternoon southwest winds expected with gusts of 15-20+ mph on the lake causing some choppy water away from the west shore. The ridgetop gusts will be a little stronger Wed-Thu with gusts of 30-40+ mph, and then lighter for the weekend. 

High pressure builds over the West through the weekend keeping the region dry and with warming high temperatures.

high pressure

Afternoon highs into the upper 80s at lake level. Temperatures will be running several degrees above average through the weekend. 70s & 60s for the higher elevations and lows in the 50s for most locations.

temps

Long-Range:

Early next week we will cool back down slightly. An area of low pressure off of the southern CA coast may help in drawing monsoonal moisture northward. But just like last weekend most of the moisture is expected to stay to our south in the southern and central Sierra, with the heaviest precip over AZ & NM.

precip

There is a low chance we could see a few pop-up showers & thunderstorms by Tuesday. If they won't bring enough moisture to our region then we are probably better off with nothing so that we don't risk more fire starts by dry lightning strikes.

Stay tuned...BA

P.S. I'll be continuing the weekly Wednesday posts with your weekend weather through the end of the summer. We are working hard on the new features for OpenSummit and will be shifting gears towards new features for OpenSnow by the end of the summer!

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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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