We are back to weekly posts through the summer unless there is a storm moving in. This upcoming weekend could be the last chance of a storm for a while so we'll keep an eye on it.

We only have 2 ski areas still open in the Sierra. Palisades and Mammoth are both now planning to stay open until 5/30 (Palisades Fri-Sun only), thanks to 7 feet of snow at Palisades in April. I have the rest of the stats below.

We continue to be on the southern edge of an active storm track into the Pacific NW this week. We have a storm moving through the to our north Monday bringing us gusty winds.

It is also keeping highs in the 40s to near 50 degrees down at lake level. Ridgetop winds are gusting up to 100+ mph from the southwest Monday. 

Nicer Weather:

High pressure builds in with nicer weather for Tuesday through the end of the week. Highs into the 60s at lake level and 50s for the upper elevations. 

Thursday & Friday we could see the ridgetop winds pick back up again, with southwest gusts up to 70+ mph both days. That could affect some upper mountain lifts at Palisades on Friday when they re-open for the weekend.

Unsettled Weekend:

Another cool trough digs into the West for the weekend starting Friday, and possibly into Monday the 9th.

That should bring us a cooler weekend with highs dropping back into the 50s at lake level and 40s for the upper mountains. The winds will likely be gusty at times as well. 

There could be two systems moving through to our north that brush us. One as early as Friday afternoon into Saturday...

...and another sometime Sunday into Monday.

We will be keeping an eye on those systems. Snow levels look to be above 7000 ft. right now. I'll update again later this week if it looks like we could see measurable snowfall at Palisades over the weekend. Some models show a few inches of snow, but the average of the models this morning on the WPC's blended model keeps most of the precip to our north.

Very wet in the Pacific NW & northern Rockies over the next 7 days!

Long-Range:

It looks like high pressure will build back in the week of the 9th with nicer weather by mid-week.

The long-range models suggest the ridge could stay parked over the region through mid-month. As we get later into May the chances increase that the dry pattern will become more prolonged as we head into the dry season. 

I'll keep an eye on the pattern and will let you know if any additional late-season storms show up. If there are no imminent storms I'll only be posting weekly on Mondays until next season.

April Stats:

I have some of the stats from the Snow Lab for April. April was a wet & snowy month. We saw more than double the average snowfall with 76" at the Snow Lab.

That brings the season to date snowfall to 104% of the 1970-2021 average of 370".

Pretty amazing that we are above average for snowfall after such a dry Jan-Mar period. You can see the big burst to well above average in December, leveling out Jan-Mar where we fell below average, and then jumping back above average in April.

We picked up 8.7" of total precipitation during April, which is 174% of the average of 5.0"

We are still just below average at 55.5" season to date vs an average of 56.2", or 99% of average. Not bad either considering the dry Jan-Mar period. 

The Snow Lab is kind of an anomaly along with the area of the northern Sierra on the north side of the lake which got hit harder than most of northern CA this season. Most areas are below average for precipitation even though the Snow Lab near Donner Summit is right near average.

Even though the snowfall is above average, the way it fell this season has us well below average for the snowpack. The snowpack measures the water content of the snow currently on the ground. We are only at 47% of average for the end of April.

That's because we had big snows in October that melted during a dry November, and then big snows in December that melted during a dry January - March. If all of the snow this season had been spread out across the months we would have a much higher snowpack percentage.

We will have to see if May will add any more to the snowfall and precipitation numbers for the water year, which ends in September.

Stay tuned...BA

All ski areas are closed except for Mammoth and Palisades Tahoe, which are open until 5/30. Palisades is only open Fri-Sun.