Just a quick post this morning as the forecast has not changed much from yesterday, and we only have one storm to discuss which is rare for this season so far.

Sunny today with highs into the upper 30's.  Sunday through Tuesday sunny with highs into the 40's, maybe even near 50 Tuesday.  The winds will pick up Tuesday as the next storm approaches.

This is a slow moving storm cutting under the ridge over Alaska this week.  We should see snow move in Wednesday evening with snow levels dropping to near lake level.  Then heavier snow Wednesday night into Thursday.  The one change this morning is that the GFS is showing the snow levels creeping up to around 6500 feet on Thursday.

Then the cold front comes through Thursday night into Friday.  It's not a very cold front and really only drops snow levels just below lake level.  This brings another round of heavier snow.

Here is the GFS total precipitation forecast on the latest run for the storm Wed-Fri.

I had a reader ask me to post the snow ratios by each 12 hour period.  I can do that as it is a part of my snowfall calculator.  Here is the snow ratio chart.

Here is the updated forecast this morning.  The models are slightly wetter this morning, so above 7000 feet where it is all snow and colder we could see quite a bit of snow from this 48 hour event.

The long-range still looks the same with a trough in the Northeast Pacific and a ridge building over the Western U.S.  The model runs are going back and forth from trying to push weakened storms into the ridge and bringing us some snow the week of the 6th, and other runs keeping the storms to the North.  

It is the middle of Winter so the jet stream is still strong and the ridge over the West keeps us on the Western edge, so like I mentioned yesterday it is possible some storms do push in even though the pattern is not ideal.

"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."

Let's hope some stronger storms can push in.

Stay tuned...BA

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'.