Stormy Weather Ahead

There have been a few light snow showers on the mountain this morning. This is what we will see through Saturday. A mix of clouds and sun with off and on light rain showers in the Village, and snow showers on the mountain. The snow levels may fluctuate between 6500-7500 ft. through the week until rising Friday, but it won't make much of a difference with the extremely light amounts of precip. We could see a coating of snow each day on the mountain.

Then Saturday night low pressure sitting off the coast moves inland slowly lasting Sunday into Monday. The exact track of the center of the low is still not certain. Some forecast models show it coming in to our South and others right over us. There is cold air at the core of the low so if it passes right over us the snow levels will drop lower. Right now It looks like they will start around 8000 ft. Saturday night before falling Sunday into Monday down close to the base.

For precip amounts the GFS forecast model has a bullseye of 1.5 inches of liquid just to our North with an inch of the Tahoe Basin. Other forecast models show a bit less. We could see several inches of snow with low snow:water ratios Sunday into Monday with 4-8 inches on the mountain above 7000 ft, and 6-12 above 8000 ft.

We see a break next Tuesday but several of the model runs have moisture from the next system heading into CA as early as Wednesday. I would lean towards Thu-Fri right now. Another low pressure, but larger, will move towards the West Coast the second half of next week possibly pushing into CA the weekend of the 6th. This storm looks like it could be pulling in a lot more moisture from the Pacific. It's not a cold storm but as the low moves over CA we should have snow on most of the mountain.

Some of the forecast models this morning have as much as 4 inches of liquid with this storm over a 4 day period Thu-Sun. It's too early for a precip forecast, but that shows the potential for this system. If this were to verify we could see several feet of snow on the mountain the weekend of the 6th. BA