Monday, October 26, 2009

Flip Flops......

Strong cold front is due to arrive tonight. This may be the bigger weather event as the models have flipped on the the ideas for the Halloween storm again.

The cold front should trigger a band of snow as it pushes thru tonight thru Tuesday morning. Snow levels will fall below 6,000 feet so we are looking at around an inch of snow at lake level & 2-4 inches on top of Northstar. Temps will be cold behind the front. Highs only in the 30's on the mountain & the low 40's at lake level thru Thursday. Lows at night will be in the 20's, so it should be a few nights to warm up the snowmaking system.

Models had been flip flopping all last week with regards to a storm coming in for next weekend. On Saturday the models all came into agreement on a cold wet storm & several model runs held this idea. When that happens less than a week away it instills lots of confidence in a storm. I and some other forecasters became fairly confident in the solution.

The past 2 days since the last post it has become evident that retrogression of the ridge wants to hold off until about a week later. So as we change to a stormier pattern this week it appears that the storm this upcoming weekend will encounter a flattened but still present ridge off the coast of CA. That will cause the storm to come onshore in the Pac NW instead of diving down the coast to CA. This will bring less cold air & less moisture. Right now it looks as if we will see some moisture with the storm but snow levels above 7,000 ft. I will be watching everyday this week to see if the storm could come further down the coast & bring us more cold & snow.

We could face the same problem with the Nov. 4th storm. The ridge does look to eventually retrograde westward with the strengthening jet allowing more storms to come into CA. I do think this will be a stormy Nov. especially compared to the last few.

There is also a lot of cooling of the Pacific going on North of Hawaii & in the Gulf of Alaska. Meanwhile the El Nino temps have warmed in all regions this week. The cold in the North Pacific would support high heights, & if a ridge of high pressure sat this winter where the major cooling is occuring, we could see a repeat of similar 51-52 conditions. In 51-52 there was a ridge in that location that allowed the cold arctic jet to dive down the coast at the same time as an enhanced Southern jet from El Nino. Stay tuned.....BA

4 comments:

Skye said...

By the way, you shouldn't trust accuweather. It's predictions are always way drier than the outcome. I trust NOAA more than most weather forecasts, so that means I like the way you're doing your forecasting.

BA said...
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BA said...
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BA said...

Hey Nick,

If you don't like the blog, STOP reading it....not that hard.