Snowfall Report:
The snow showers Saturday night dropped a dusting of fresh snow at the base and 2 inches of fluffy powder up top. That’s exactly what we expected from this weak and cold system.
Sunday – Thursday Weather:
We will have a few clouds around but mostly sunny skies and cold for Sunday and Monday. Highs in the 20s for Sunday and then 30s for Monday. Mostly sunny days continue through Thursday with highs warming into the 40s with high pressure over the region.
Weekend Storms:
The forecast models are still trying to figure out how to handle a trough digging down from the north by next weekend along with a storm moving towards the coast from the Pacific. The latest model runs have trended toward holding off on precipitation until later Friday into Saturday. They are shifting run to run between preciptiation falling to our north or aimed at the Tahoe basin.
Either way, with being on the southern edge and tapping subtropical moisture, we could see higher snow levels with some rain showers for the base and snow for the upper mountain. We will be watching the trends closely all week. The latest model runs show light-moderate amounts of precipitation falling through Saturday.
The precipitation could diminish for next Sunday with the low-pressure system still off the coast but the moisture feed into northern CA ending as the northern system moves east.
Long-Range Forecast:
Going into the week of the 3rd that low off the coast should come inland eventually, so we’ll watch the track of that. The latest long-range model runs have been trending toward the trough digging a bit farther off the coast that week.
We will have to see if that allows additional wetter system to spin up into the trough and track into northern CA. As we’ve been talking about, there is a battle as the troughs try to shift farther west over the West Coast and high pressure keeps trying to build in closer to the coast.
The ensemble mean models have trended back toward a -PNA (west coast trough) pattern for the first week of February. That is back toward a wetter/snowier pattern for the first week of February. We’ll continue to watch the trend and hope that we see some snow next weekend into the week of the 3rd.
BA