Bluebird.......

It is a beautiful morning up here on the mountain with not a cloud in the sky and a fresh coating of snow from the weekend.

We have an interesting storm shaping up for tomorrow into Wednesday. There is a nice subtropical moisture tap from down near Hawaii feeding into the jetstream that is approaching the coast. This will initially bring heavy precip and temps in the 30's tomorrow night before the Northern branch of the jetstream and a cold front quickly come down from the North bringing colder air and pushing the heavier precip to our South. This will be very cold air so the atmosphere will be unstable and snow showers should continue into Wednesday. The Euro is much more aggressive with the spillover of the precip into the Tahoe Basin than other models are, and I like its thinking. Right now it is looking like 10-15 inches in the Village, and 15-20 inches on top by Wednesday night. We will tweak these amounts tonight and again tomorrow morning.

Behind the storm there is lots of cold air with temps in the teens down to lake level Thursday and Friday, and overnight lows in the single digits to below zero in Martis Valley. The ridge is going to scoot a little closer to the coast by the weekend so the next storm will slide down the coast. Right now it looks weak and the exact track will determine whether we see a few inches or nothing for New Years.

After that the ridge sits around 140w and expands Northward keeping the storm track to our North for about 10 days. We should see normal temps and at most a dusting as storms hit the Pacific NW. We are transitioning to a true La Nina pattern now as the strong La Nina takes over the pattern. Around the 10th of January we may see the ridge take its classic La Nina position out around 160w. We will see the return of the storm train as a trough digs off the West Coast and pulls moisture from across the Pacific underneath of the ridge. Right now I am expecting the middle of January and beyond to be quite stormy. Keep your fingers crossed. BA