Round 2......

After a nice day today with sun & 60's another cold storm is headed our way for Sat./Sun. with the chance for some light snow accumulations. 

A storm will be dropping down straight out of Canada down the West Coast on Saturday.  The front should come thru our area sometime later in the day on Saturday.  The storm is taking the drier path so like the last storm there won't be a big area of precip associated with the cold front.  This storm will be colder than the last storm though with snow levels dropping below 5,000 ft.  The amount of cold unstable air as the low moves over us should trigger a band of snow showers.  I wouldn't expect much accumulation but there could be as much as a few inches on the mountains & an inch or two in town Saturday night.  Since the storm is coming down from the north & there will not be any shadowing from the mtns. Reno could even get a dusting of snow.  Snow showers could linger Sunday with highs struggling to break 40 in town & will stay in the 30's on the mountains.

It stays cold in the 40's Monday & then slowly warms into the 50's during the week & the 60's by the weekend as the ridge builds in off the coast.  Models have been consistent the past few days in suggesting that the ridge suppresses the week of the 12th & then retrogrades out towards our magical locations of 160w.  This may be a result of the PNA going sharply negative allowing the storm track to level out.  This would allow the chance for a couple of storms coming into the West Coast that week which could produce our first significant snowfall.  Beyond that the ridge looks to rebuild & the PNA is forecast to go positive.  Still looks as if we won't be getting any help from the MJO as it is stalled in phase 5 of the phase space.   If it goes towards phase 6 that would juice the jet & we could be in for a decent storm the middle of the month.

As regular readers know I have become somewhat fascinated with the lack of sunspots. There are different theories on what it could mean for us from colder temps to more earthquakes. It will be interesting to see what happens if the sun stays asleep. We did have some spots this week but they are gone now & today is number 213 this year for a spotless sun. We have 90 more days left to get to 267 & break last years spot for #2 on the past 100 years spotless list.


September & 2009 re-cap coming soon.  I want to wait for a few more stations to report since September ends our water year.  Slightly above avg. temps & extremely dry is the September theme, more later.  BA