Game On!

I've been talking about a Halloween snowstorm for a couple of weeks but now that we are less than a week away the confidence is highly increasing.

A few more days of nice weather & then the pattern change finally kicks in. A cold front will drop down out of Canada just to our East on Monday night. The unstable cold air may allow a snow shower or two as the front nears. Temps on Tues-Thurs will only be in the 40's & in the 30's on the mountains. Lows will be in 20's at night with strong inversions. Northstar should be able to test out the snow guns down low.

Models have become more consistent on a storm for the end of the week. You have permission to start getting excited & you will probably start to hear about the storm in the next few days on from media outlets.

The ridge is going to back up in the pacific towards 150w allowing a storm to dive down the coast out of the Gulf of Alaska. This storm will have lots of cold air so snow levels will be well below lake level. It will also have good over water trajectory so it will have lots of moisture to work with. We could have snow with the initial cold front on Friday & then another round Sat./Sun. as the main low comes over us. It is too early to have 100% confidence in the storm & to talk about amounts, but when a bunch of the models start to agree & agree for several model runs, confidence starts to increase. If the storm comes in the way it looks now we would see over a foot of snow even down to lake level. We will have to keep watching the storm over the next 5 days & hope that it maintains the track it looks to be having the past 2 days.

The ridge may remain out in the central Pacific long enough to allow another storm with a similar track to hit the region around the 4th/5th of Nov. There will be cold air behind these storms so after the snow falls Northstar should be able to turn on the snow guns & begin some good base building. If this works out it would be the best start to snow making in at least 4 years.

Looking longer range the ridge may shift back towards the central Pacific for a little break in the storm action. BA