The weather will become more active this week. First, we have to deal with a little bit of smoke to start the week. The southerly flow over the weekend began to bring in some smoke, and it could hang around into Tuesday.

By Tuesday after the winds are picking up and gusting up to 50+ mph from the southwest over the ridges by evening. That will finally clear out the smoke going into Tuesday night. We should see mostly sunny skies during the day through Tuesday. Highs near 70 at lake level Monday and 60s for Tuesday.

First Trough:

The first trough pushes into the West Coast by Wednesday. Gusty winds continuing with gusts up to 70+ mph from the southwest over the ridge tops. Increasing clouds Wednesday with cooler air moving in. Highs only in the 50s at lake level and 40s for the upper mountains. 

By Wednesday night into Thursday, we could see some rain and high elevation snow showers moving through. Overall amounts look light and we are on the warm side of the jet. So snow levels should stay above 8000 ft. More of a nuisance but nice to see the moisture!

High temperatures continue to be below average through Friday. We may not break 50 degrees at lake level Friday and maybe only 30s for highs above 8-9k.

Additional moisture may stream into northern and central CA Thursday night into Friday continuing the chances for showers. Snow levels right now don't look to fall below 8000 ft. until later Friday night into Saturday morning, likely after most of the showers fall. But we could see some light accumulations on the highest peaks Thu-Fri above 8500-9000 ft.

The forecast models differ on how much moisture streams into CA. Here is a look at the drier GFS model this morning.

And here is a look at the wetter European model through Friday night. The ICON and Canadian models are leaning towards the western Euro model.

We will continue to watch the trends through the week, but it shouldn't matter a whole lot for snow with the high snow levels.

Saturday we should clear and start to warm through the weekend. It could be another nice weekend but slightly cooler than this past weekend. Highs warm into the 50s by Saturday and 60s by Sunday as the cool trough shifts east of the region.

Second Trough:

Another trough is not far behind the first one and could dig down from the north early next week. By Tuesday we could have a colder trough over the region than the one moving in this week.

We could see highs drop back into the 40s by next Tuesday, and overall the departures from average could be even colder over the West Coast.

It's possible that we could see some snow showers with the passing of the cold front early next week. The forecast models also show the trough possibly hanging around through mid-month. That could allow additional systems to drop into the region later next week. These systems could be colder with lower snow levels than this week. 

Right now none look very big on the long-range models. But the potential is there next week to see at least a few flakes close to lake level and maybe some light snow accumulations on the mountains if the pattern sets up the way the current models show.

Here is a look at the total precip on the European Ensemble Mean model over the next 2 weeks. Not a lot of moisture but it gets things started as we go through the first month of the water year.

Not a bad-looking setup through mid-month for some nice cool fall weather and maybe several systems moving through to whiten the peaks and get us in the mood for winter?

Stay tuned...BA