Thursday, December 23, 2010

Baseball or Weather?

Mother nature keeps throwing us the splitter this week. The ridge over the Rockies does not want to move East at all, so our next storm for Sunday could be a repeat of yesterday. The storm has decent moisture and will drive into Northern CA on Saturday. Then the ridge to the East will stand it on end South-North and then tilt it back, hence the term negative tilt. This turns the winds South to North or even Southeast to Northwest. Winds that direction will not push the storm over the mountains or create lift up the mountains. That means you will see lots of moisture on radar that never pushes over the crest into Tahoe like yesterday. If the ridge were a little further to our East this storm would just push in and bring an easy foot or more or snow.

The direction of the winds will also mean the storm is not as cold and could start as rain showers at lake level Saturday night before turning to snow. Total snow amounts I am going to cut in half today to 3-6 inches in the Village and 6-9 inches on top. If the storm also splits as it hits the back of the ridge then we may have to bring them down a little more like yesterday. We should clear out by the end of the day on Sunday.

The ridge will break down and we will have a different pattern by the middle of next week. We should see a colder storm dive in on Wednesday and there is a trough to our East so no chance of splitting this time. That storm ushers in cold air that lasts into the weekend and we should see another cold storm around New Years.

A few more thoughts on the longer range at the end of the post below from yesterday. BA

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