It's day 2 of a drier pattern that is expected to be with us for 2+ weeks based on the latest model runs. Hopefully, storms return sooner but for now, the forecast looks mostly dry.

High pressure will build over the West through Wednesday blocking storms trying to move into the West Coast.

You can see one approaching Sunday that will fall apart as it tries to move inland.

We could see a few clouds move through Monday and then again Wednesday - Thursday as the Western ridge shifts east and another weak system weakens as it moves through to our north. 

Overall expecting mostly sunny skies through the end of the week. Highs in the 40s at lake level and 30s for the upper mountains. The winds look like they will be fairly light through the end of the week.

We had overnight inversions Saturday night. As an example, temperatures are around 15 degrees at the base of Palisades Tahoe early Sunday morning, and 30 degrees up top. We could continue to see overnight temperature inversions through the end of the week.

By next weekend (15th-16th) the ridge is over the West Coast still blocking storms from moving into the West Coast.

Looking at the 7-day snowfall forecasts through Saturday the 15th, they show the storm track and snow mainly staying up into Canada and hitting the very northern parts of the Cascades in Washington and the Rockies in northern Idaho and northwest Montana.

The snow over CO & NM is from a merging of two weak systems on the GFS model on Friday, one from the north and one from the southwest. The European model only shows a dusting. The point is that through next Saturday only weak systems are likely for most of the West and likely completely dry for CA.

Week 2:

From the 16th - 22nd, the long-range models have been showing the ridge shifting off the coast. They continue to show that Sunday morning.

For CA that is just a shift from one dry pattern to another as the high-pressure ridge is still close enough to the West Coast to block storms from moving in off of the Pacific. It does open up the Rockies to storms moving down from the north on the east side of the ridge. The storms could start to pick up for them week 2 during the 3rd week of January.

We could see the storms drop down to our east close enough for some colder air to filter in at times and maybe a few clouds and gusty winds. But any measurable snowfall doesn't look likely right now through at least the 22nd.

Fantasy Range:

The long-range models continue to show slow retrogression of the long-wave ridge near the West Coast farther west away from the coast through the end of the month. 

The question is still how far West and how fast. How fast the active phase of the MJO (Madden Julian Oscillation) moves into phases 2 & 3 in the Indian Ocean could give us a hint, but we don't have a clear forecast on that yet. The GFS extended model and European Weeklies both have a trough digging into CA during the last week of January on the latest runs.

If we see the ridge shift far enough NW towards the Aleutians to allow a trough to dig down the West Coast during the last week of January, then we could maybe see storms return before the end of the month. The GFS extended ensemble mean model is showing snowfall picking back up the last week of January.

The PNA (Pacific North American) teleconnection pattern forecasts show this progression of the pattern. Here is a look at the GFS extended ensemble mean model for the PNA pattern from this weekend through February 11th.

You can see we are shifting into a positive PNA pattern (western ridge) this week, then neutral week 2 (ridge near the West Coast), and continue a shift back into a negative PNA pattern (western trough) week 3 into February. If that holds the storm door should start to open back up the last week of January into February.

Once we see a shift we could start out February snowier than we are starting January. For now, this is all just speculation based on the signals we are seeing in the forecast models and teleconnection forecasts. This is where we will be focused until we get a concrete forecast for when storms will return.

Stay tuned...BA

P.S. The Tahoe "Daily" Snow posts may shift to "Bi-Daily" until we have storms back in the forecast. No point in posting daily about how it is going to be sunny for the next 2 weeks. We can cover that bi-daily along with the long-range outlook until we are talking about specific storms again.

On this week's episode of The Flakes Podcast, we take a trip to Wyoming with forecaster Alan Smith, & talk about the snow in the Rockies with Evan & Mike. We also go through our weekly Pow Finder Report, talk about the outlook for the next 5 days & the rest of January, and Mike tells us where we should chase powder this week!

Available on most podcast platforms...