Friday Weather:
Sun and clouds for Friday as the cold front approaches that will start to move through from the north Friday night. Highs into the 40s.
Weekend Cold & Snow Showers:
We have a cold front moving through Friday night into Saturday that is mostly dry with only a few snow showers expected, but then on Saturday low pressure spins up to our south and drops into SoCal into Sunday. That will increase the snow showers around the Tahoe basin into Saturday night, and then scattered snow showers with some sun for Sunday.
It will be much colder for Saturday and Sunday with highs only in the 20s, and snow levels dropping very low, likely below 2000 ft. Saturday night. East winds with ridgetop gusts up to 30-40+ mph.
This will be fluffy powder with 15-20:1 snow ratios. The snow is currently soft with the mild days, and that will firm up Friday night through the weekend. We could see 1-4 inches of fluffy powder on top of the base by Sunday.
Monday – Friday Weather:
High pressure builds back in for a few days starting Monday, with sunny days expected. Highs into the 30s for Monday and the 40s for the lower elevations by Tuesday into Wednesday.
The trend over the past 24 hours is for a storm moving through the eastern Pacific to try and move into northern CA by Thursday night into Friday, but it weakens significantly as it encounters high pressure over the region. Some model runs are dry while some now show a few showers possible.
We will continue to watch the trends to see if the sunny days will continue through the last day of January, or if we could end the month with some showers.
Long-Range Forecast:
Going into the first week of February, low pressure is forecast north of Hawaii in the North Pacific along with an extension of the jet stream underneath aimed toward the Pacific NW. While there is high pressure off of CA, a stronger high-pressure ridge is forecast over Alaska. That could suppress the storm track farther south and squeeze it between the two into the Pacific NW and far northern CA.
That puts Tahoe on the southern edge of the storm track during the first week of February, similar to what we saw for most of the winter up until the beginning of January. The latest operational model runs show preciptiation streaming in during the first weekend of February, with Tahoe on the southern edge, and more storms possible to our north into the week of the 3rd.
We will be watching closely with more details on potential storms for next weekend and beyond as we get closer.
BA