Finally.......

Feels like forever since it snowed 12 days ago.

Storm this week coming in two pieces. The first arrives tonight with snow levels starting around 7000 ft. and then falling to 6000 ft. on Tuesday. The second piece comes in tomorrow night lasting into Wednesday with snow levels well below lake level. Looking at a combination of models it looks like a total of around 1" of liquid in the Tahoe basin. Snow ratios will stay low at 12:1 above 7000 ft. and 10:1 or lower at lake level. Due to the initial start as rain at lake level that will also lower the totals there, but I don't think anyone plans to ski at lake level so it doesn't really matter. That would put us at around 4-8 inches in the village with 8-12+ inches above 7000 ft.

Ridge moves back in Thursday with nice weather into Saturday. A weak splitting storm goes by to our North on Saturday but it doesn't look like we get anything. Another weak splitting storm comes through on Sunday and could bring us a few inches.

On Monday the ridge breaks down and a ridge reforms out around 150w, just to the East of Hawaii. This will set up a strong jetstream stretched across the Pacific and into CA. Models in a little disagreement on when the train rolls in, but it should be here by Tuesday with 4-5 storms rolling into CA over the course of the next week. There will really be no break in between with the moist jetstream over CA the entire time. Snow levels look to stay below lake level the entire week. The main question will be where the jetstream sets up for the heaviest precip. Right now it looks like it will set up over Southern CA, but still in a location where we will get light/moderate snow all week. Take a look here. You can see that the heaviest precip the 19th-27th is to our South, but still puts us in the 4-6 foot range for the week. Could be very similar to the second week of December.

GFS suggests a ridge trying to push back in the middle of the last week of January, but I don't buy that right now. El Nino is fairly strong (although beginning it's downturn now to fading out by summer), the NAO is forecast to stay neutral preventing any blocking pattern in the East, and the PNA is forecast to go negative keeping the storm track into CA. All things that point towards the storminess to continue through the end of the month. BA

"The way to procure insults is to submit to them: a man meets with no more respect than he exacts." William Hazlitt