Tuesday – Wednesday:
We are in a dry pattern through Wednesday. Mostly sunny with highs into the 50s on the lower mountain and 40s up top. Winds up top gusting up to 40+ mph from the southwest by Wednesday afternoon.
Thursday Night – Saturday Systems:
The next storm is digging south and splitting as it moves into CA Thursday. That is delaying the onset of the precipitation as the flow turns southerly. We could see some clouds and southerly ridgetop winds up to 50+ mph Thursday. Highs into the 40s.
The rain and snow showers may hold off until later Thursday evening now. Snow levels could be slower to fall as well. Maybe starting around 7000-8000 ft. Thursday evening with rain at the base, and then falling close to the base by Friday morning. We may only see 1-3 inches of snow on the mountain by Friday morning.
The snow showers continue into Friday and increase in intensity again later Friday into Friday night as a 2nd colder system dives into the region. This is a better chance for snowfall accumulation and powdery vs wet snow. Highs drop into the 30s Friday and temps into the 20s up top by later in the day. Ridgetop winds turn southwest with lighter gusts in the morning and increasing to 50+ mph again by afternoon.
Snow showers could continue but become more scattered Saturday with highs only in the 30s at the base and 20s up top. The winds should come down some as well. By Saturday morning we could see an additional 3-7 inches of snow on the mountain. Scattered snow showers Saturday could bring very light additional accumulations.
Long-Range:
It looks like we could stay on the colder side but drier Sunday through next Tuesday. Then the trough over the West could back over CA again by midweek with additional systems possibly dropping down from the north the 2nd half of next week.
The latest long-range forecast model runs suggest a trough could form in the northeast Pacific off the West Coast by mid-month, which could finally allow some wetter storms to spin up off the coast that try to push into CA. We’ll continue to keep an eye on that as we get closer.
BA
