Kick Starting Winter......

A few changes today in regards to the storms coming over the next several days. The storm for Sunday is speeding up and it now looks like it will hit during the day on Sunday. Biggest affect of that is it will lower snow accumulations a little at the base and in the Village with the heating of the sun through the clouds. The latest model runs this morning have the Euro showing the snow levels coming down a bit slower and the GFS a bit faster. The Euro also has a little less precip for the Basin than the GFS. Regardless, this will still be a nice accumulating snow event to get winter started here in the Tahoe Basin. We also need to discuss a storm for next Wednesday that now looks like it could be a nice snow producer as well, especially for the lower elevations.

For this Sunday expect rain and snow to move in during the day. Snow levels will start around 7500 ft. & then will drop to lake level by evening. I'm going to split the two models today on snow totals and then we can adjust tomorrow if there are any changes. Look for 4-8 inches on the mountain & 1-4 inches in the Village, mostly Sunday night from post frontal snow showers.

It is cold behind the storm on Monday and Tuesday so snowmaking should resume on top of the fresh snow. Another storm arrives on Wednesday. This storm looked to go to our North until today when the models all decided to bring it further South. This is a cold storm so the snow levels will be below lake level from the start. The storm is not that strong, but if it stays South over Tahoe like the models show today then we could be looking at several more inches of snow. More cold will follow that storm for some good snowmaking. Hopefully between the snow & snowmaking Northstar will be able to hit it's target opening day of the 20th.

I want to re-cap October really quick before we forget about it. October was an extremely wet month and one of the best starts to the water year in Tahoe's history. Both the Tahoe & Truckee River basins receive just over 400% of average precip, which came mostly as rainfall. The temperature averaged -0.8 below average for the month making that 11 out of the past 12 months below average reported in Truckee. BA