Wednesday – Saturday Weather:
The sunny days and mild weather continue through Saturday, with highs in the 50s and 40s for the higher elevations.
Sunday System:
The Sunday system is forecast to drop south into CA with precipitation pushing in Sunday morning. That motion will bring southerly winds which could limit how much precipitation reaches the mountain. The winds don’t look that strong but could gust up to 30-50+ mph from the SSW over the ridges. Highs drop into the 30s as colder air works in.
The snow levels look to start around 6300-6800 ft. Sunday morning as the precipitation moves in, dropping to around 5500-6000 ft. by evening, and below 5000 ft. Sunday night. That means some rain is possible near the base on Sunday before snow levels drop by evening, but mostly snow for the mountain above 6500 ft.
Snowfall totals by Monday morning could be around 2-5 inches at the base, 3-7 inches near mid-mountain, and 4-8 inches up top. We could see partly sunny skies on Monday with some scattered snow showers, but most of the snow falls by Monday morning. Highs in the 30s.
Wednesday System:
On Tuesday we will see a quick break between storms with partly-mostly sunny skies and highs in the 30s, to near 40 degrees down at the base.
Then the next storm could move into CA on Wednesday. The latest model runs show this storm tracking farther south into southern CA. That means we could just get brushed on the northern edge with a few showers.
The latest model runs show snow levels starting higher and dropping through the day, but the coldest air is at the center of the low to our south. We could just see some light rain and snow showers with highs in the 30s on the mountain. We’ll continue to watch the trends.
Long-Range Forecast:
We could see high pressure build in over CA briefly from around the 6th-8th bringing a break in the action. But the long-range models continue to show the eastern Pacific ridge shifting out to south of the Aleutians by the 9th, with a broad trough digging in over the West Coast between the 9th-11th.
That should open the door to a wetter storm at some point during that period. The latest operational model runs show a pretty big storm around the 10th. We’ll continue to watch the trends on that.
Beyond the 11th there is still a trend toward the Eastern Pacific ridge shifting east a bit closer to the West Coast. That could bump the storm track to our north starting around the 11th, but the active storm track to our north may also dig far enough south to bring additional storms to the northern Sierra. We’ll continue to watch the trends on that as well.
BA
