Summary:

Anywhere from 2 to 9 inches of snow fell on the mountains overnight on the North side of the lake, and a coating to an inch on the South side.  Snow continues this morning, heaviest now on to the South of the lake.  Snow will continue in waves throughout the weekend on the mountains, with 6-12 inches in total possible on the mountains by Monday morning.  A stronger system moves in Tuesday-Wednesday that could bring another 1-2 feet to the mountains.  Then we may have another dry spell starting next weekend.

Details:

A band of heavy precip pushed in along the I-80 corridor around 11 p.m. and then slowly pushed South overnight.  It weakened as it reached the South side of the lake.  Another band setup early this morning in the same location but that is weakening.  A stronger band is setting up South of the lake this morning.  As of 6 a.m. the ski resorts were reporting 2-4 inches overnight on the North side of the lake, and 9 inches for the resorts on Donner Summit.  At 6:30 a.m. we had 5 inches on Donner Summit at 7000' at the official measuring location for Opensnow.

Here are some shots of the ski resorts this morning starting with Boreal... reporting 9 inches up top

Sugar Bowl... also reporting 9 inches up top

Squaw...

South of the lake near Sierra and Kirkwood the heavier snow is just now pushing in, so they are a little behind.

Moisture will continue to stream into the Tahoe basin over the weekend.  Snow levels dropped to lake level last night during the heavy precip and came back up a little with the lighter precip.  That should be the case much of the weekend as we see waves of heavier precip and then lighter snowfall confined to the mountains.  

Looking at the forecast models it seems like the NAM did pretty well yesterday with placing the band of moisture across the Tahoe basin.  Here is the total precipitation forecast for the weekend from this morning's run.

The way I put together the forecast for the weekend on the individual resort pages found on the CA and NV pages, is breaking the snowfall on the mountains into 1-3 inches each 12 hour period through Sunday.  I used 2-4 inches along the crest.  That is working out so far.  By Monday morning when we tally up the totals it still looks like we will be in the 6-12 inch range above 7000 ft. in the basin, and 12-18 West of the basin along the crest.

For next week the forecast models are in decent agreement on the scenario, and are becoming more agreeable on precip amounts.  We should see a break Monday before low pressure off the coast pushes a front through on Tuesday, and then the low pushes through on Wednesday.  Forecast models are still showing a slug of subtropical moisture being pulled up from the South ahead of the cold front.

The snow levels may come up above 7000 ft. with the moisture from the South, but models keep them close to 7000 ft. throughout the event, possibly a bit lower Wednesday as the main area of low pressure moves through.  Total precip amounts currently look to be around an inch in the basin and 2 inches along the crest.  That would bring another 1-2 feet to the mountains by Thursday morning.

Some of the models keep light precip around Thursday with a weak system moving through Friday.  That may keep things unsettled until next weekend.

Long-Range:

It looks like we are going to flip back to a positive PNA pattern with a ridge along the West Coast next weekend and beyond.  The jet stream across the North Pacific is strengthening week 2.  The European model tries to break through the ridge around the 10th, but that seems early.  The GFS seems more successful around mid-month.  So a week or more of dry weather may be in store after the snow this week.

Stay tuned...BA

P.S. you should check out our individual resort pages, they have a lot of great info on them including snowfall history by day and time lapse cams.