Tahoe Daily Snow

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By Bryan Allegretto, Forecaster Posted 6 years ago December 18, 2017

A Little Snow Relief...

Summary

Sunny and mild today and Tuesday with light to calm winds and highs in the 40's, to near 50 at lake level. Tuesday night into Wednesday a cold front moves through bringing back the colder air with highs in the 30's into the weekend. It also bring a chance for snowfall with 1-4 inches possible at lake level and 1-6 inches possible on the mountains. The weather should stay dry and cool Thursday through the weekend. The dry pattern may continue into Christmas Day with seasonal temperatures. We are watching to see if storms could break into CA the last few days of the month as high pressure shifts NW away from the area.

Short Term Forecast

We are continuing to track the cold trough and cold front with snow for Wednesday.  It could be the first measurable snow after a 16 day break.  I'm not counting the inch from Friday night.  We have been tracking this storm for 2 weeks waiting for a storm to finally arrive.

Yesterday all of the forecast models were continuing to trend wetter with the trough digging further West as it moves down from the North Tuesday night, allowing it to pick up more moisture off the Pacific.  The trend this morning is a bit drier, especially on the GFS.  

Here is a look at the shift in the pattern Tuesday night into Wednesday as the cold trough moves down from the North.

trough wed

The cold front and snow should arrive around midnight and into the early morning hours, moving from NW to SE across the lake.  The snow levels should drop well below lake level at the start.  The winds will also pick up again on the mountains Tuesday night into Wednesday.

The latest GFS model run is maxing out around 0.3 inches of liquid on the high end West of the lake along the Sierra crest.

gfs for wed

The European model pushes the heavier precip a bit closer to the area with about double what the GFS is showing along the crest.

euro wed

I think the GFS is not recognizing that there will be good forcing with the cold front to push precip into the area.  It's usually the European model doing that.  Looking at the WPC's multi model blended forecast it shows the wetter scenario.

wpc

Overall it's not a very wet storm.  It's a cold dry storm, but the cold air will help with the snowfall amounts with the limited moisture.  Here is a look at my updated snowfall forecast by Wednesday afternoon when the snow tapers off.

snow wed

Behind the storm there is more cold air like we saw over the weekend.  Highs will drop back into the 30's into next weekend.  High pressure will build back in over the West Coast which should keep us dry into Christmas Day.

Extended Forecast

Here is a look at the pattern forecast on the GFS ensemble mean run by Sunday.  It is similar on the other models.

sunday ridge

That pattern going into next week should bring a lot of cold air to most of the country.  We will have to see how far West the cold air pushes towards CA, but it should at least be close enough to keep temperatures near the seasonal averages.  The average high this time of year at lake level is around 40 degrees.

After the 25th as we move towards the end of the month we are still expecting a change in the pattern.  The forecast models have really been struggling with what that could mean for the possibility of storms.

Here is a look at the GFS and European ensemble mean forecasts for height anomalies by the 29th.

gfs 29

European 29

They are both similar with the high pressure ridge shifting up towards Alaska.  We have been talking about this possible pattern for the last week of the month for a couple weeks now.  So there really hasn't been much change in the forecast.  The question is whether we could see just some colder air, or colder air and storms breaking under the ridge into CA.

The latest GFS ensemble runs have trended towards less of a chance for storms by the end of the year.  The latest runs show about 13% of the members showing storms breaking through by the end of the month.  That is making the mean run show not much precip after the storm this Wednesday.

gefs

The European ensemble runs have actually increased the chances of storm breaking through this morning, with about 50% of the members showing it.  That has the mean run showing a wetter forecast the last 5 days of the month on top of the storm this Wednesday.

eps

The European model tends to be a little more accurate in the long-range historically.  It is also trending a bit wetter.  The GFS has had model runs over the past week that show storms breaking through, and the Canadian model is showing it on many runs including this morning.  I still think we are at the odds of 50/50 chance that storms can break through the last few days of the month. 

If they do we only have about a week of dry weather after the storm Wednesday.  If they don't we could be heading into another 2 week dry spell after Wednesday.  Let's hope for a better pattern and less headaches as we head into January.

Stay tuned...BA

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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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