Happy Thanksgiving........

A little early to wish Happy Thanksgiving but I will be on the road tonight, along with the rest of the people who own cars, heading to my in-laws for Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving will mark the turn in the weather pattern for the upcoming winter I believe.

A quick aside; according to an email i received from a mountain ops person at Northstar, they have been hammering the snowmaking every night and there are more trails opening every day.  Most impressive snowmaking this early that I have seen just from driving by.  I believe they will attempt to run all three lifts by this weekend with several trails coming off the upper half of the mountain.  Nice to have snow flying on the mountain while we wait for mother nature to unload.

Two nicest days will be today and tomorrow ahead of the next storm system. Temps will hit the 50's in the valley's. Snowmaking will be very iffy the next two nights as you go up in elevation. Tomorrow night we get the tail end of a storm hitting the Pacific NW. Wouldn't expect more than some light snow showers and a dusting into Friday. Big change will be the Northerly flow and cold air behind the front. Temps will only be in the 30's on the mountain through the weekend, with excellent snowmaking temps all the way up. Ridge will start to rebuild off the coast over the weekend and to start next week we should stay cool with decent snowmaking conditions at night.

Models are really struggling this week with the change coming in the pattern. Starting next week and also starting December, the pattern is going to want to start taking on El Nino characteristics. The ridge off the coast is going to try and shift Northward and build in over Western Canada. Meanwhile a much weakened MJO is finally where we want it to be in order to enhance the jetstream across the Pacific. There will be strong storms heading towards Western Canada all week. What we need to happen is for a split to form in the jetstream and send the Southern branch under the ridge into CA. This is not showing up yet consistently on the models. What is showing up is the ridge in Western Canada pushing the storms under the ridge into the Pacific NW and Northern CA by the end of next week, which would bring snow to our area.

This pattern may take a couple of weeks to really develop, but I think once it does we will have the hose turned on. By the middle of December we could be seeing excessive amounts of snow. Mean while the massive amounts of cold pouring into the rest of the country over the next couple of weeks should keep a cool flow into our area and keep the conditions ideas for snowmaking, making it possible for the resort to keep opening additional terrain.

Will post again on Friday. Stay tuned because the forecast could turn quickly. If the jetstream splits we could get a storm within a few days starting next week. BA