Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Season of Sprinter......

My chiropractor Dr. Schroeder informed me of the new season of "Sprinter" that we are in right now. I think that describes well the weather we will see this week.

A false spring will be in affect thru Friday with temps in the 50's & sunny. Downtown Truckee will get close to 60.

Retrogression of the ridge by Saturday will allow a storm to drop down out of the Gulf of Alaska and dig off the coast. This path will allow it to get some decent moisture before coming onshore over Central CA, with snow starting late Saturday or Saturday night. Model trends have been for more moisture, but a slight splitting of the storm which would bring the heaviest snow South of Lake Tahoe. Still, as of now we are currently looking for over a foot on the mountains in North Lake with not much shadowing from the crest. South Lake near Sierra at Tahoe looks to get close to 1 1/2 ft., & over 2 ft. further South towards Mammoth. Will have to watch the models the next few days to see who will end up getting the direct hit with the most snow.

After a few warm days this week the cold coming with this storm will put us back to reality. Temps on Saturday will be in the 30's on the mtn & then the mid 20's for Sunday with snow falling. Snow levels will start around lake level Saturday before falling down below 4000 ft., so snow for everyone. This will up snow ratios as well so look for powdery snow on Sunday. Snow winds down Sunday night, with the ridge rebuilding offshore, but temps will be slow to warm with highs only in the 30's on the mtn. Monday & Tuesday with sun returning.

Temps continue to warm thru next week back to normal levels for this time of year. The ridge looks to keep storm activity to our North thru the end of the week. Still looking at the possibility of the ridge shifting back towards the Central Pacific towards the end of the month with another storm cycle possibly setting up going into the first week of April.

Looking towards next season there seems to be some disagreement in the research of the global patterns taking shape. The top two long-range global forecasters that I follow seem to see similar things but disagree on their affects. One thinks we are headed towards a mild El Nino meaning less ridge & more storms for CA next winter, while the other thinks we may be locked into La Nina a bit longer which would mean another cold but on the fence as far as precip winter. Check back throughout the summer as I will occasionally post as new info comes in. October is normally when the official winter outlooks start coming in. BA

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good insightful blog - I have been following it all season.

Can you explain the snowfall variation between diff. ski resorts (N.star, vs. Squaw vs. Apline)? So close to each other, do they really get diff. amounts or just reported differently by each mtn.?

BA said...

Northstar is not along the ridge of the mtn. range, it is a volcano called Mt. Pluto that erupted in the valley East of the range. Therefore it is in the rain shadow of the range to it's West. It still gets decent amounts due to it's elevation.

Do you want the detailed explanation?

Anonymous said...

we gonna see snow on saturday morning or is it likely to be later in the day?

thanks

BA said...

"snow starting late Saturday or Saturday night."

that is a quote from the post, are you reading it?