Sunny Days Continue

The Next Two Weeks:

I’m going to put the forecast for the slow trend cooler and slightly wetter in one forecast section today. We start with the strong ridge over the West this week, which is bringing warm temperatures and sunny days.

The high-pressure ridge over the West is forecast to weaken somewhat going into next week, but still stay over the West, keeping us dry with mild temperatures, just not as mild as this week. Storms are forecast to return to the Pacific NW, but only a few models show light showers reaching us, with the rest showing some clouds at best by later in the week.

During the last few days of March into the first few days of April, the ridge is forecast to finally weaken and shift east, with some lower heights and troughing near the West Coast. That would continue the cooling trend with temperatures getting closer to average, and maybe slightly below average, to start April.

Looking at the OpenSnow forecast range charts for temperatures near the base, we see them topping out near 70 degrees this week, dropping to near 60 degrees for highs next week, and then 50s and possibly 40s by the beginning of April.

Near 8000 feet, the forecast is for highs to hit 60 degrees this week, dropping closer to 50 degrees next week, and into the 40s by the 29th and 30s by the beginning of April. The overnight lows have been staying above freezing, which is contributing to the soft base, but they are forecast to finally dip below freezing by the end of the month.

As the ridge weakens and shifts away by the end of the month, and we possibly see some troughing as we go into April, that could open the door to storms moving through the northern Sierra at times. But the latest model runs only show weak systems moving through and light amounts of precipitation accumulating in total by Thursday, the 2nd.

With the temperature forecasts getting colder by then, we will likely see some snow showers on the mountain, but we need big snowstorms that are still not on the horizon. The jet stream looks pretty weak by the beginning of April, and the storms as well on the latest model runs.

We could see a slow-moving or bigger storm in April that brings some appreciable snowfall. We’ve seen feet of snow in April in past seasons. We’ll continue to watch the trends closely going into April.

BA