Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 2 years ago August 4, 2021

Dry & Windy Weather...

Summary

Dry and windy weather is expected Thursday and early next week. Dry weather through the period. Slightly cooler Thursday, warmer into the weekend, and then slightly cooler again early next week. Smoky skies expected at least through Saturday, and again early next week.

Update

Welcome to another episode of your weekly weather for the weekend. We have a dry forecast ahead with some windy days. 

The good news is that the smoke has mostly cleared the Tahoe region. We have a few bigger fires to our north but the typical wind direction during the summer is southwest which is keeping the smoke to our north.

smoke

Our air quality maps are looking much better this week.

air quality

The Dixie fire just to our north is now over 250k acres and it doesn't take much for variable winds overnight from the north to bring smoke back to the south, which will likely happen Friday into Saturday. 

So far CA has seen over 500k acres of forecast burned this summer. The U.S. as a whole has seen over 3M acres burned so far. Here is a look at the last 10 years of fire stats.

fires

The Forecast:

For Thursday, we will see a small trough move into the West Coast.

trough

That will bring us some windy and cooler weather. Highs only in the 70s at lake level. It will be windy most of the day, especially in the afternoon with gusts of 20-30+ mph from the southwest. That will bring rough water to the lake, and it will also bring higher fire danger. The NWS Reno has issued a Red Flag Warming for Thursday. Ridgetop winds will be gusting up to 60+ mph.

Here is a look at the OpenSummit forecast for Mt. Rose Peak.

winds 2

The Weekend:

Friday the winds should be much lighter and highs return to around 80 degrees at lake level into Saturday. The sunny and dry weather continues. That variable winds will bring a return of smoke to the area Friday into Saturday. By Saturday afternoon the typical Zephyr winds should return with southwest winds gusting 15-20+ mph on the lake and 20-30+ mph over the ridges, but likely not enough to clear the smoke.

By Sunday afternoon another trough may be approaching the Pacific Northwest which could help to bring a return of some stronger afternoon winds and slightly cooler air. Lake winds gusting from the southwest 20-30+ mph by afternoon bringing rough water again, and 30-40+ mph over the mountain tops. That could also bring a better chance of clearing out the smoke and bring some better air quality.

Early Next Week:

The Pacific NW trough moves into the Rockies early next week.

trough 2

That could keep us slightly cooler with highs only in the 70s at lake level and 50s for the highest peaks. It could also mean that the gusty afternoon winds continue. Variable winds overnight could bring a return of smoke from the Dixie Fire early in the week.

With the change in the pattern this week the southerly flow and surge of monsoonal moisture northward has gone away. That means we don't have a moisture source through early next week to help develop afternoon showers and thunderstorms as we saw over the past week. The forecast models keep us dry over at least the next 7 days.

precip

No big heat waves ahead but no moisture either. Just dry with windy days which is not good for fires. Let's hope everyone is responsible and we don't see many new starts...

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!

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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