Step by Step......

Ok, so it's Wednesday and I'm sure you are seeing the change in the weather being forecast by local media outlets, so let's get into the details.

The ridge is kicking East as a storm is approaching the West Coast. As is usual when the first storm arrives to push a strong ridge to the East, the storm is going to split. The main energy off the CA coast is going to dive down towards the Baja of CA & Mexico. We will be left with the Northern half of the storm that is going to send most of it's energy into the Pacific NW. The models have been a little inconsistent with the amount of precip that reaches Tahoe. 2 days ago it had as much as 6 of snow in the Basin, but the trend has been drier with most of the moisture staying to our North. With this scenario it looks like we may get some snow showers on the mountain, with snow levels above 7000 ft.

A second storm will dive in for Sunday. This storm looks to bring the cold air further South with snow levels below 6000 ft., but with the same scenario of showers with the bulk of the moisture staying to our North. We are changing the pattern into a stormy pattern this weekend but we are going to have to prime the pump at first. We look to be in a pattern of storms hitting the Pacific NW every few days with each storm digging a little further West bringing the chance of a little colder air and a little more moisture. The theme next week may be dustings with colder air behind the storms which will get the snow guns firing again.

Take a look at the MJO(Madden Julian Oscillation). I have been mentioning how it has been wandering around on the other side of the world so we would not be getting much help from it with our weather. But look at the past six days, it is on the move Eastward. As it gets into sections 4, then 5, then 6, we should start to see some retrogression of the ridge in the Central Pacific and an increase in the strength of the jetstream. This should in theory allow storms to dig further down off the West Coast and bring the center and more moist parts of the storms into CA. The PNA is still forecasted to head slightly negative this month as well which favors more troughs and less ridging along the West Coast.

To summarize, next week the storms will be coming in to our North bringing us light amounts of precip and progressively colder air. As we head into the 3rd & 4th week of Nov. we should start to see wetter storms with a better chance of finally getting our first big dump. BA