Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 8 years ago December 22, 2015

A Nice Base...

Summary:

Light rain showers at lake level today with snow levels around 7500 ft.  Above that we could see a few additional inches of snow on the mountains.  Tonight snow levels drop back below lake levels with some scattered snow showers around.  For Wednesday it will be colder with some scattered snow showers around.  Winds stay gusty on the mountains with highs in the 30's and lows in the 20's.

Christmas Eve a cold storm moves through that will drop several inches at lake level, and over a foot of new snow on the mountains.  The snow tapers off Thursday night with scattered snow showers into Friday.  The sun should come out for Saturday.  Temperatures stay cold with highs only in the 20's at lake level, and maybe only the teens on the mountains.

Temps warm a little for Sunday before a weak cold storm could brush by to the North Monday with light snow showers.  After that we may have a break in the storms for at least a week.

Details:

Snow levels stayed close to lake level 6200' on the West shore yesterday with heavy wet snow, and around 6500' on the East shore.  A brief break in the heavy precip during the evening allowed snow levels to come up a few hundred feet and they sat at or just below 7000 feet overnight.  Then this morning around 4-5 a.m. as the heavy precip shifted South snow levels jumped up above 7500 ft.

Snow totals about 7000 feet were pretty significant.  Here at the office we picked up 14.5 more inches in the past 24 hours bringing the storm total right to 2 feet.  Above 8000 feet the ski resorts along the crest are reporting up to 3 additional feet, and the rest 10-20 inches.  Storm totals are anywhere from 12 inches on the lower mountains on the East Side of the basin, up to 44 inches on the West side along the crest.  An example of base snowfall is Squaw is reporting 8 inches at the base for storm total, and 41 inches up top.

snow reports

Sugar Bowl is up near 5 feet for the 4 day total!

Colder air will work its way back in this afternoon and tonight.  Snow levels should fall back near 7000 feet this afternoon and below lake level tonight. The heavy precip is gone though and we are only expecting light rain/snow showers with a few inches possible on the mountains.

The cold storm for Thursday is still on track.  Some disagreement on the forecast models with amounts of total precip.  The GFS and NAM have up to an inch of liquid in the Central basin, while the European model has half of that.  For now I will split the GFS & Euro totals, but leaning towards the majority.  This is a cold storm with up to 15:1 snow ratios for the mountains.

We could see 3-6 inches at lake level on the East side of the lake, and 6-9 on the West side.  For the mountains we could see 6-9 on the East side of the lake, 9-12 up the middle, and 12-15 West of the lake and along the crest.  If the wetter models are correct we could see a few inches more than that.

Behind the storm it is cold with scattered snow showers possible into Friday.  The sun comes out Saturday but highs remain in the 20's.  The winds stay gusty into the weekend on the mountains with all of the storm activity, with 40-50 mph gusts possible.  Wind chills will make it fell really cold.

Sunday we will warm a little into the 30's.  Then Monday a weak storm moves through to our North.  We could see some light snow showers Monday but it doesn't look very impressive.

Long-Range:

It still looks like high pressure could build along the West Coast with a break in the action starting Tuesday.  The next storm might not be until we see another pattern change around the 7th.  The European model does show a cut-off low possibly wandering in next Thursday so we will see if that shows up again.

Ok, I have to go, I have a big day ahead clearing 2 feet of heavy wet snow from around the property.

Stay tuned...BA

 

About Our Forecaster

Bryan Allegretto

Forecaster

Bryan Allegretto has been writing insightful posts about snow storms for over the last 15 years and is known as Tahoe's go-to snow forecaster. BA grew up in south Jersey, surfing, snowboarding, and chasing down the storms creating the epic conditions for both.

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