Sunny & Mild Weather Continues:
Mostly sunny days continue through Friday with highs in the 40s. Some high clouds are possible by later in the day on Friday.
Weekend Cold and Snow:
A cold trough will dig south into CA by Saturday and will stick around into Monday. That will bring in a shot of much colder air for the weekend into Monday, and some snow showers possible with the cold front on Saturday. High temperatures will drop into the 20s for the weekend and 30s for the lower elevations on Monday.
Cold fronts moving down from the northeast aren’t able to tap into Pacific moisture and are moisture-starved, and you have to rely on mountain lift to cool the air and create most of the steadier snow showers. Most of the snow showers likely fall during the day on Saturday and could linger into Saturday night.
Even though the system is moisture-starved, it will be very cold with high snow:liquid ratios, around 15-20:1. That will help to fluff up the snowfall totals from the limited moisture. Using an average from the latest model runs, it looks like we could pick up a dusting up to 2 inches of snow by early Sunday morning.
Back to Dry Weather:
The latest model runs continue to show high-pressure building right back in over the region next week. That will bring back the dry pattern with sunny days expected for most of the week, through at least the last day of January. High temperatures warming back into the 40s.
Long-Range Forecast:
As we go into the first week of February the long-range models continue to show the ridge shifting into the eastern Pacific, but as with the last two weeks of January any shifts have been closer to the coast as we get closer.
If we see this pattern for the first and possibly second weeks of February, the active storm track could return to the Pacific NW, with northern CA on the southern edge, similar to what we saw for most of December.
That could mean a mostly dry pattern for us, or maybe we catch the southern edge of some of the storms with some snow. But unless the trough can dig farther west over the West Coast, we likely won’t see the cold wet storms that we need. Let’s hope for a couple of surprises soon…
BA