Chilly with East Winds

Gusty East Winds:

The only weather of note in the Short-Term forecast section is gusty east winds through Saturday. Ridgetop winds gusting up to 40-50+ mph on Friday and 50-60+ mph Saturday. Kirkwood tends to see even stronger winds in these events.

Sunny Week Ahead:

Mostly sunny skies are expected each day through next Friday, the 13th. Chilly with highs in the 40s for the lower elevations and 30s for the higher elevations through Saturday, and then 50s for the lower elevations and 40s for the higher elevations starting Sunday.

Week 2:

By next weekend, the GFS models are still a bit different than the other forecast models. They suggest that the troughs digging south into the West could dig a bit closer to the northern Sierra by next weekend, into the week of the 16th, with a weaker ridge near the West Coast, and a chance for storms to push far enough south to bring us some rain and high elevation snow.

But don’t get too excited yet, because just about all of the other models, including the trusty European AI ensemble mean model, show a slightly stronger and more amplified ridge near the West Coast next weekend, and they keep the storms to our north and east through the 3rd week of March.

We’ll continue to watch the trends closely to see if the GFS model has any merit. In the meantime, no significant snowfall is on the horizon through the 3rd week of March.

Long-Range Outlook:

The long-range ensemble mean models suggest that the ridge near the West Coast shifts inland over the West by the end of the 3rd week of March. That could push the storm track farther north and could also bring a slightly milder pattern.

Then, during the 4th week of March into the end of the month, the longer-range models continue to suggest that the ridge shifts NW out into the northeast Pacific, with a trough possible over the West and West Coast.

That has been the period that we’ve been keeping an eye on as possibly our only and next hope of seeing some measurable snowfall. But it’s still more than two weeks away. We’ll continue to hope and watch for a pattern shift that could bring us snow during March.

BA