The smoky skies and poor air quality conditions as the Caldor fire inches closer to the Tahoe basin. We are starting to see weekly troughs with cooldowns as we are getting later into the summer, but no precipitation on the horizon yet.

We have gusty southwest winds Wednesday and highs only in the 70s as a trough moves through. That is only helping to fan the flames.

They are finally gaining some ground on the Dixie fire to our north. It has burned over 735k acres! But they now have 43% containment.

Hundreds of structures have already burned from the Caldor fire to the southwest of Tahoe. That fire is inching closer to the area. It has now burned over 130k acres and is only 11% contained.

It is not far now from Sierra at Tahoe to the east and moving towards desolation wilderness to the north. You can see the smoke from the mountain getting closer.

With the persistent southwest wind pattern most afternoons that is funneling smoke continuously into the area.

The good news is that the west/southwest winds through Saturday afternoon should be lighter with gusts of only 15-20+ mph. The bad news is that the dry conditions and the smoke will likely persist and the fire will continue to creep closer to the area.

The sunny but smoky skies will continue. It will stay cooler through Thursday with highs in the 70s at lake level. Then a warmup through the weekend back into the 80s as high pressure builds over the region.

By Sunday afternoon another trough is pushing into the West Coast. That could bring back stronger winds in the afternoons into early next week. And cooler temperatures again by the middle of the week.

It's fun starting to see these deeper troughs move through. A reminder that it won't be long until the jet stream starts to strengthen and dip south with storms spinning up over the Pacific. If we see early snow it can be as early as the 1st half of September which is now only 2-3 weeks away. For now, the forecast remains dry through next week.

I touched briefly on the winter forecast in the last post. It's still a bit early yet to look at the forecast, but we will be starting to dig in more during September. For now, here is a positive forecast from the European Seasonal model for the next 3 months showing near to above average precip chances.

After the year we've had wouldn't it be great to start off the wet season early and with a bang? Unfortunately, we know all too well to take long-range climate model forecasts with a grain of salt. Let's hope we are tracking storms soon though for the sake of the fires. I know I'm ready for clean air and no fires...

Stay tuned...BA