A Beautiful Day:
Sunny skies and mild temperatures with light winds for Thursday. Highs in the 40s and close to 50 degrees at the base. Get out and enjoy the nice weather before a dramatic change starting Friday.
Friday – Saturday Storm:
Lighter precipitation pushes in Friday morning and becomes steadier through the afternoon into Friday night. Snow levels are going to start low so expect to see some flakes down to the base to start before they start to rise Friday afternoon into Saturday. Then heavy precipitation is expected through Saturday night as the atmospheric river is aimed at northern CA.
Strong winds will arrive on Friday with ridgetop gusts up to 70-90+ mph from the SW by afternoon, and that continues through the weekend. We should see upper mountain lift closures from the winds through the weekend. Highs in the 30s.
Snow levels start near the base Friday morning, and then rise to around 7000-8000 ft. by evening. They could hover there through Friday night. Then rising up to around 7500-8500 ft. by Saturday afternoon. They could drop back down near 7000-8000 ft. Saturday night into early Sunday morning. The best chance for lower snow levels is during the heaviest precipitation rates.
We expect mostly all rain at the base with a mix possible up to 7k’. A mixed bag between 7000-8000 ft. and possibly all snow above 8000 ft., which is a bit colder than the models were showing yesterday. Low snow ratios with thick snow on the mountains. By Sunday morning we could see 10-19 inches near mid-mountain and 31-38 inches up top.
Sunday – Monday Forecast:
Most of the forecast models continue heavy precipitation into the day on Sunday. Then we still have a split with half of them lifting the AR to our north Sunday night into Monday, and then south Monday night into Tuesday morning. The strong winds continue up top with highs in the 30s.
The difference in potential rain and snowfall totals is HUGE as the driest models only show up to 1 inch of additional precipitation over the mountain by early Tuesday morning, and others show up to 10 inches!
The snow levels may remain in the 7000-8000 ft. range during the day on Sunday. Then they could drop as low as 6000-7000 ft. Sunday night into Monday, and as low as 5000-6000 ft. Monday night. That means we could see no snow below 7k’ if the models are right about a drier forecast Sunday night – Monday, or we could get dumped on if heavy precipitation continues.
Taking the model average this morning, we could see around 9-18 inches of additional snowfall at the base by Tuesday morning, 28-35 inches near mid-mountain, and 37-45 inches up top. That means we could see 4-day total of around 5-7 feet up top! Unfortunately, the strong winds may keep much of that area unreachable.
Tuesday – Wednesday:
We will have to continue to watch the trends for Tuesday and Wednesday. Most models are trying to shift this storm out sometime on Tuesday, maybe by morning, while others keep the precipitation going into Wednesday morning. I’ll add more details as the outcome becomes clearer.
The winds will likely still be gusty but likely not as strong for Tuesday and Wednesday, with highs in the 30s for the lower elevations and 20s for the higher elevations.
Long-Range Forecast:
The forecast models are all over the place through the end of the week into the weekend of the 8th. We could see the low that was stalled near the Pacific NW coast finally drop south with some snow showers on Thursday. Then another storm is still possible for the weekend.
Even though the solutions are all over the place, the ensemble mean models show a decent amount of additional preciptiation possible for the 7-day period from Tuesday the 4th through Monday the 10th.
We’ll continue to watch the trends…
BA