Tahoe Daily Snow

Heads up, there may be fresher snow! Read the latest Tahoe Daily Snow

By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 7 years ago January 25, 2017

More Stats, More Snow...

Summary

Some clouds around today and a weak system moving through tonight into Thursday that could bring a dusting of snow. The rest of the weekend will be sunny and cold with highs in the 30's. To start next week we will be sunny with highs in the low 40's at lake level through Tuesday. By Wednesday the next storm begins to move in. This may be a prolonged snow event with a slow moving storm that may bring a couple feet of new snow.

Short Term Forecast

I have a few more stats this morning while we wait out this break in the storms for another week.  I have the official snowfall numbers from the Snow Lab.

This is a record January with 237 inches beating the old record for January of 159 inches set in 1973.  This is also a monthly record beating March of 1992 which saw 201 inches.  Here is the January snowfall graph.

jan snow

Just a tad more than January 2015....  Season to date we are at #2 with 326 inches, just 10 inches shy of the record set on on 1/28/1995 of 336 inches, which will will not beat as there is no more snow in the forecast for the rest of the month.  Here is the Oct-Jan snowfall graph.

oct-jan snow

In total we are at 80% of the seasonal average about 43% of the way through the ski season.  That is at 7000 feet at the snow lab.  At 8000 feet on the mountains you'll remember from yesterday that we are at 90% of average with less rain.  I will have rainfall numbers at the end of the month.

There is a weak system moving through tonight into Thursday.  It is causing some clouds today and could bring a few light snow showers and a dusting of snow overnight.

The rest of the weekend and into early next week we have quiet weather as high pressure builds in.  The winds for Friday don't look as strong this morning, maybe gusting to around 50mph on the mountain tops.

Extended Forecast

For a week now we have been watching for a pattern change by the middle of next week.  Here is a look at the pattern this weekend.

rdge

Here is a look at the pattern forecast by next Friday on the GFS ensemble mean. 

next friday

We are looking for the ridge to shift Northwest towards Alaska, and a trough to push into the west Coast starting next Wednesday.  The latest model runs show a slow moving storm sitting off the West Coast Wed-Fri next week pushing moisture into CA.  If that forecast continues we could see a multi-day snow event with 2-3 feet of snow.  It is still too early to talk specific amounts, but here is the GFS 10 day precip forecast.

gfs precip

The European and GFS model runs are showing a negative EPO and WPO pattern setting up again going into February.

epo wpo

This pattern sets up a ridge in the North Pacific from Alaska to the Bering Sea.  We saw this same setup in December and January.  The jet stream cuts underneath into the West Coast.  This pattern brought the Atmospheric River events this season.  So we may be in for more heavy rain and snow?

Here is the Canadian ensemble mean forecast for the Feb 8th.

canadian

So we may have a lot more fun in store after this 7 day break in the storms.

Stay tuned...BA

P.S. I will be traveling tomorrow and will not be able to post until Friday.

Announcements

Geography Key:

East

Mt. Rose, Heavenly, Diamond Peak

Central

Northstar

West

Tahoe Donner, Homewood, Bear Valley, Dodge Ridge

Crest

Boreal, Donner Ski Ranch, Sugar Bowl, Squaw, Alpine, Sierra, Kirkwood

*Boreal and Donner Ski Ranch are forecast with the "West" mountains in higher snow levels events.

*The snowfall forecasts on the ski resort pages are for the upper mountains at 8000'.

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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