Friday, February 20, 2009
How Bout Them Pineapples........
Quick update on the monster storm developing off the coast. The progress of the storm has slowed the past few days and that has caused this thing to sit & draw in more & more moisture from the tropics. As it gets closer tomorrow it will start drawing moisture from back towards Hawaii, similar to a "Pineapple Express". Precip should start to fall during the day Sunday and it will fall hard. This was a cold storm but because it now has stalled and sucked in subtropical moisture, the snow levels will start out a little high. The way it looks right now is the precip moves in by Sunday afternoon with snow levels starting near 8000 ft. Then lowering to 7000 - 7500 Sunday night, & then to 6500 by Monday. That is at the bottom of most resorts. Then lower below lake level by Monday night as the colder storm moves in from Alaska & joins up with the storm off the coast. The heaviest precip should fall Sunday & Monday, but plenty left for Tuesday & Wed. as the main low comes onshore. We should get quite a bit of rain, especially in town, but hopefully it will end as a decent amount of snow for everyone. Up on the mountains where it is all snow or mostly snow, there could be several feet.
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8 comments:
Thanks for your awesome weather reports - I have a friend from the East coast coming this weekend for a 2.5 week ski holiday at Northstar.....your reports have been keeping him "pumped" for a great time in the Sierras !
I am begining to notice a pattern with your blog. You always predict a HUGE ass kicking storm. Then when it gets here, and is not as big, you give reasons why it didn't hit as hard as you thought. Not that I am calling BS, as evedent by the fact that I still read your blog, it is just a little disapointing sometimes. Do the resorts pay you to hype it up a little. And what are these "models" you reference. Got any links.
You are forgetting the times I say it's going to snow a little and we get a lot, like last Sunday when I was predicting 3-6 inches and we got 13-18. This has been a quiet winter. I only predicted two 2-week storm cycles all year. One was the last 2 weeks of Dec. when I said I thought we would hit 100" in two weeks and we went well over, and then this past two weeks where resorts got 8-12 feet.
The forecast models are what all meteorologists use to help predict weather. The main ones are the GFS, ECMWF, NAM, JMA, & NOGAPS. Anyone can access these online. There are so many hundreds of factors going into a storm predictino, especially cut-offs which we have been dealing with a lot. If the models are showing a huge amount of precip for a storm I'm going to say so, and then I fine tune it as they change. they run 2-4 times a day so they are conastantly tweaking the details, and I try to explain why. Noone knows exactly what a storm is going to do. If you were to read other meteorologist blogs you would find they are saying things in line with what I'm saying at that time. I always compare & I actually try to be cautious on my predictions. Sometimes storms are bigger than it looks and sometimes smaller, but noone just makes things up.
No, I am not paid by any resorts to hype anything. I would like an example of when i was way off. Latest storm I said 3-4 feet, some peaks 5 along the crest and that is exactly what happened.........?
Hey BA thanks for all the work you put. It's cool to have someone that is closer to right then wrong with these storms. Keep up the good work and shine the then nay sayers.
Bill, if anything Bryan undershoots his estimates :D
I have a bad feeling about this storm...In my mind's eye, I see snow levels remaining at or above 7500 feet through Monday afternoon.
This could potentially wash out a ton of snow in the Sierras. :(
BA, I read your blog usually first thing in the morning with my cup'o java. I've found your information to be accurate enough that I can plan my days off, usually a week in advance, so I can make my trips up from the Bay Area.
I talk up your blog to anyone who will listen. Keep up the good work.
You are doing a great job. Your website is far more fascinating than almost any other commercial meterological broadcast I have seen. I am a fan of Karl Bohnak at WLUC in the upper peninsula of Michigan. He loves snow and big storms, and has even written books about great storms in Michigan history. It's great to see someone with a passion for a complex subject.
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