Saturday, March 7, 2009

Best Weekend of the Season!

A cold start this morning in the teens with single digits in town. This weekend looks amazing after all that snow earlier in the week, with sunny skies and temps in the 30's on the mtn. & hitting 40 in town.

Another storm goes up and over the ridge forming in the Gulf of Alaska and slides down over us Sun. into Mon. This storm won't have much moisture so we should only get some snow flurries, but it will bring down more cold air. Highs Mon. & Tues. will be in the 20's on the mtn. & 30's in town.

Sun looks to return Tuesday as that ridge off the coast moves a little closer and blocks off storm activity. Temps should start to warm a little on Wed. into the end of the week.

Big change today in the model runs for next weekend. They were consistent all week on a big storm moving in for the weekend & then storms continuing into the following week. The ridge should re-form out in the Central Pacific allowing a nice flow to set up for storms. What models have happening right now is the storm for Friday hitting the back of the ridge as it is exiting East on Friday and splitting off from the main flow. This has happened with the initial storm that starts the storm cycle the past two months.

Hopefully the cut-off low will spin in the Central Pacific & gather moisture, then be pulled Northward ahead of the next storm coming in for the beginning of the week of the 15th, with continued storminess for that week. Latest GFS at 9 a.m. today tries to form a high pressure to the North of the cut-off low forming a Rex Block type pattern, which puts the whole pattern into a freeze with no progression of storms for a while, & we are stuck in sun & warmth. I don't buy that right now. I want to watch the models till Monday to see how it irons out. With the overall global pattern we should be stormy the second half of the month after a break this week. BA

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

BA, love the blog but I'm not gonna lie, today's update was a little over my head. I'll be in Tahoe next week...Snow or no snow? or is it too early too tell?

thanks

Anonymous said...

that last comment may have been vague. By next week I meant the week of the 16th

BA said...

Sorry for the confusing post, but it is because I am a little confused myself in what is going to happen. Confidence was high all week for a stormy week the week of the 16th, with a long wave pattern like we have had the past month reforming with lots of cold storms.

The problem right now is what happens to the low that gets cut off from the main flow this week? cut-0ffs are hard to predict since there is nothing steering them. hopefully it gets pushed into CA by the next storm behind it starting monday the 16th which would open the storm door for that week. As I mentioned in the post there is the chance that it could get stuck due to a high pressure forming in a strange spot to it's north and that would jam up the whole flow the entire week & we would be stuck in sun & warmth until the jam got undone. Let's hope that doesn't happen. We don't need another situation like January.