Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ski, Skate, & Sun Week......

Nice weather the next two days. Weak storm will move through to our North over the developing ridge on Friday night. GFS keeps it far enough North that we only get 1-3 inches. NAM has it coming just far enough South to bring Tahoe 6-9 inches. Will split down the middle for now and look for 3-6 inches. Just enough to freshen the base before the big weekend.

The ridge builds in over the weekend and temps quickly warm into the 40's as we go into a non-active weather pattern for about a week. It has actually been over two weeks since we have had a big storm so by the end of next week that will be 3 weeks. Storms have been going into Southern CA the last few weeks, which is typical of El Nino. This is why I never understand the hype in Northern CA around El Nino's, they target Southern CA.

4 out of 5 stars were aligned for next week in the teleconnections. Over the past week the MJO was stalled in the Western Pacific & the SOI was at record negative values which would cause Westerly wind bursts and lots of convection to feed the jet. Usually a week later the affects would be storms into the West coast. Also going into next week the PNA begins to trend negative flattening the jet into the West Coast, and the NAO trends back towards neutral weakening any blocking in the Atlantic. Those four factors led me to believe it would be stormy next week a week ago. Then, the cold air from the extremely negative AO poured into the country and will hold the ridge in place over the West for about a week in the wake of the big East Coast blizzard happening today. Therefore, the storms for next week will be pushed to our North into the Pacific Northwest.

All we need is to wait for the cold air to moderate in the East and the blocking will weaken allowing the storms to return to CA. The last two dry spells, one in December & one in January, were followed by a prolonged period of stormy weather. Looking for the same to happen again in February. With little blocking and the cold air moderating the block should alleviate and storms should return by the second president's weekend (19th-20th). Stay Tuned......BA

"In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it." John Ruskin

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