Summary:

The weather will stay nice through Thanksgiving and then we undergo a pattern change with snow possible Saturday through next Wednesday. Amounts could be significant in the mountains and we should see decent accumulations down to lake level as well.

Details:

So I'm a little delayed this morning as the forecast models came out of agreement and changed overnight. I looked at a lot of runs and tried to get a good handle on what they are seeing. There are two main changes.

First, the trough and associated cold front pushing down the West Coast over the weekend is going to push further South.  The models were showing it stalling well to the North earlier this week.  That will help to push moisture into the basin with the first wave of precip Saturday into Sunday, and may bring in enough cold air to bring snow levels to lake level.  The amount of precip Saturday and Sunday is not that impressive, but could be enough for 6-9 inches on the mountains above 7000 ft. with up to 12 West of the basin along the crest.  At lake level it will depend on snow levels if we see 3-6 inches of snow depending on elevation.

Here is the GFS Saturday night and you can see the front stretched along the Northern border of CA, NV, and UT pushing South.  You can also see the main low stalled off the coast.

Here is the GFS total precip through Sunday

And the Canadian...

My snowfall forecast was based on the GFS which is on the low end of the model output to be safe for now.  The Canadian, European, and the new GFS all show higher amounts of liquid for the weekend.  The higher end would be double what I am forecasting. 

The second change is that the trough is going to dig off the coast over the weekend and stall the main low pushing in off the Pacific.  This is the stronger storm that should bring heavy snowfall once it pushes in.  As it stalls off the coast the trough digs off the coast it will create a brief ridge over us Sunday night into Monday.  We may have no precip now in this timeframe.

The forecast models show the low pushing inland sometime on Tuesday into Wednesday.  The GFS is the outlier again with this as it shows the low moving down the coast and not across the state which leads to lower precip amounts.  Only several more inches of snow.

I'm not sure whether to be cautious or to stop using the old GFS and start using the new Updated version which shows this...

which is still in line with the forecast for total snow through Wendesday of 1-2 feet at lake level, 2-3 feet on the mountains, and a bit more than that possible West of the basin along the crest. 

The Canadian shows similar amounts...

As does the European.  Like most sites we are not allowed to share European model maps for free on our site.  We are working on having all of our snow forecasts for each mountain linked to it though as we believe it is the most accurate forecast model on average.

So taking a look at the whole picture it looks like slightly lower snow levels this weekend and higher amounts of snowfall possible.  The main storm stalls off the coast before pushing in next Tuesday into Wednesday.  Total snowfall still looks like it could be in feet.

The weekend amounts are only a few days away now so confidence is growing we will see at least several inches on the mountains.  For next week we are still more than 5 days away so things will likely still shift around a little in the forecast each day.

Long-Range:

It still looks like the ridge of high pressure will build off the coast by the end of next week keeping us dry for a week or more.  Hopefully not....

Stay tuned....BA