Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 7 years ago January 27, 2017

Tahoe at it's Best...

Summary

Sunny and cold again today. Winds will be a little gusty up to 30 mph on the mountain tops. This weekend into early next week the sun continues and temperatures rise into the 40's. Time to start thinking about lathering on the sunscreen. By Wednesday the next storm begins to move in. It appears that the snow may not move in until late afternoon or evening Wednesday. This is a slow moving storm that may bring snowfall into Friday. We could see a few feet of snow on the mountains. By the weekend of the 4th the storm track may shift to our North with more quiet weather for a prolonged period.

Short Term Forecast

Beautiful weather and deep snowpacks is what Tahoe is all about.  That is what we have this week into early next week.

High pressure will continue to build over the West Coast this weekend which will warm temperatures that have been in the 30's, into the 40's.  With the inversions we are seeing temperatures almost the same during the day from top to bottom on the mountains.

We have been watching this storm for next week now for at least 10 days.  The forecast models did a great job far out on seeing this storm after a week of dry weather.  This is not an atmospheric river event that is coming, nor have I said that in a forecast.  But I'm hearing that around town.  This is a slow moving storm that looks like it will bring a 2 day snowfall event.

The storm is coming across the Pacific and under the ridge to the North so it doesn't have a lot of cold air with it.  Latest model runs show snow levels sitting near to just below lake level for this storm.  The total precip amounts are fairly similar on the models.  Here is the GFS for next week.

gfs

The latest trend is to push in the heavier precip Wednesday evening and lasting into Friday.  This is similar to the last storm with a push of moisture ahead of the front, and then a cold front with heavy snow.  We are barely 5 days out, but I will bend the 5 day forecast rule and put out the initial snowfall forecast for this storm.

forecast

Extended Forecast

Starting next weekend the 4th, the models have been struggling with the pattern and changing over the last few days.  

The latest trends show the WPO (western pacific oscillation) pattern going deeply negative going into the middle of February, and the EPO (eastern pacific oscillation) trending back towards neutral, as well as the PNA.

teleconns

That pattern is the ridge to the North near Alaska shifting further West towards Siberia.  So the block is much further West and there is not a block near Alaska pushing the storm track underneath into CA.  Instead the whole wavelength backs up and there is a trough Northwest of Hawaii and a ridge over the Western U.S.  The storm track then most likely shifts to our North.

Here is the GFS ensemble mean forecast by the 6th.

gfs2

and then by the 12th...

gfs1

The ensemble mean runs of the European and Canadian models are similar.  This doesn't mean a strong storm doesn't push through the ridge into the West Coast, but for the most part the storm track is North.

Stay tuned...BA

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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