Summary:

Rain/Snow mix at lake level today and snow above 6500 ft.  We are expecting several inches of snow today on the mountains with high winds and temps in the 30's.  Tonight the snow levels rise near 7000 ft. with several more inches above that on the mountains.  Then on Tuesday the snow continues with snow levels starting to come down in the afternoon.  Gusty winds continue on the mountains and several more inches of snow expected.  Tuesday night the snow begins to taper off as snow levels drop near lake level.  Snowfall totals by Wednesday morning of 1-3+ feet on the mountains.

Wednesday we should see a break in the action before a cold storm drops 6-12 inches across the Tahoe Basin on Christmas Eve.  Friday is cold and then the sun returns with nice weather into the weekend.  We could see a quick moving storm bring light snow next Monday.  After that we may have a break for a week before we transition back to a stormy pattern in January.

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Details:

 We saw snow showers continue on the mountains along the West side of the basin yesterday, and the snow shower activity picked up across the basin in the early morning hours.  We saw 2-9 inches of snow fall on the mountains in the past 24 hours.

The heavier precip from the moisture feed across the Pacific is pushing in this morning.  It is pulling in plenty of moisture.

You can see the heavy precip pushing into Northern CA this morning.

Wet snow started falling near 6200' lake level this morning and a rain/snow mix down to 5900' Truckee.  Looking at the web cams the accumulating snow is around 6300-6400'.  We were expected the snow levels to start near lake level today and rise to near 7000 feet by this evening.  That is based on the freezing levels on the forecast models.  They show snow levels going up near 7500 feet tonight before starting to come down Tuesday and near lake level by Tuesday evening as the heavy precip shifts South of the area.  Looking at the thicknesses on the models they do show the possibility of the snow levels staying a little lower with the steady heavy precip, especially along the crest.  

The NWS snow levels forecast updated this morning has lower snow levels through the storm.

The snow levels are already a little higher than this to start.  We will have to see what happens when the heavier precip pushes in, but I would lean towards higher snow levels of 7000+ ft. tonight before coming down Tuesday afternoon.  My office is right at 7000 ft. on Donner Summit so I will know how close they are to 7000 ft.

The forecast models continued to come in wetter in during the past 24 hours and have finally leveled off this morning.  Amazingly there is still a big difference in the amount of precip spilling over the crest into the Tahoe basin between the GFS and European models through Tuesday night.  

Much less of a variance along the crest, but still about 1 inch.  The Canadian model is still in the middle of the 2, and the NAM is still showing more precip than the European.   So still a lot of uncertainty with total precip, spillover, and snow levels even as we as the storm is moving in this morning. The heavy precip is expected to continue into Tuesday before tapering off Tuesday night.

You can see the shadowing for the basin continuing on the GFS, but I'm leaning towards more spillover as shown on the other models.

I continued to use a GFS/Euro average for the snowfall forecast.  I'm using low snow ratios on the mountains and figuring mostly rain until the very end at lake level.  This assumes all snow at 7000 feet, so if we see a change to rain tonight that would cut down the 7000 ft. totals.  Above 8000 feet it will be all snow and with a model average of 4+ inches along the crest we could see 3+ feet of base building snow.

If you forget where the resorts are in relation to the crest here is the map again.

You can also just look at the individual Resort Forecast Pages.

The winds will be gusting over 75 mph on the ridge tops today so there should be lots of wind holds.  They will continue to gust into Tuesday at 50+ mph.  The precip clears out by Wednesday with a brief break in the action.  The winds will be breezy but it might be a good day to get up on the mountains before the next storm on Thursday.

Thursday a cold storm moves through as cold trough pushes into the West Coast.  We could see 3-6 inches at lake level and 6-12 inches on the mountains during the day Thursday.  Snow levels will be well below valley floors so we should have a White Christmas for most of the area.  

Temperatures behind the front will only be in the 20's into next weekend, but the sun will return for some blue bird days after all the snow this week.

Long-Range:

We could see another quick hitting storm next Monday.  The GFS is very weak with the precip and the European model is slightly wetter.  We could see a light snowfall event.  New on the European run last night was the possibility of a 2nd quick hitting storm for next Wednesday.  The GFS is already building the ridge and the European follows after Wednesday.  

The long-range of the models and ensembles are in good agreement that we see high pressure over the West Coast and a break in storms for about a week starting the middle of next week.  This looks like it could be a transition period as we may finally go into a true El Nino pattern by the end of the first week of January.

Here is the GFS ensemble mean run for January 5th.  Starting to see the high pressure shifting North and lows underneath as we would expect in the El Nino influenced pattern.

Here is the CFSv2 precip forecast for the 7th -12th of January. 

So the fun may continue...

Stay tuned....BA

 P.S.  I was getting messages last night from people surprised when the NWS put out a winter storm warning for up to 3 feet.  I had my high end snowfall forecast yesterday morning for the crest at 34 inches.  Isn't that pretty close to 3 feet?