Overview
An area of low pressure will come onshore in Central and Southern California Wednesday morning, rotating up an initial surge of moisture that could trigger a chance of light snow showers in southwest flow by Wednesday afternoon generally north of Haviland and in La Plata Canyon. As this happens, the main piece of energy starts to move through California. The initial surge of sub-tropical air will move through New Mexico by Wednesday evening, temporarily shutting off the moisture flow as the low pressure brings snow to southern Utah late Wednesday night. The low is forecasted to continue moving east through the night with snow returning to elevations above 8,000 feet after midnight, and light drizzle to lower elevations. Snow levels will drop to 7,000 feet Thursday morning with 3-6 inches of snow above 8,500′ (perhaps a little more at Mayday). Above 7,200′ feet, 2-5 inches of snow is possible with perhaps a heavy dusting to an inch or two below 7,000 feet as the system passes us.
The models are still not in complete agreement on this system, they probably won’t be until they see exactly where the low comes onshore, just a little too far north and it will lose its intensity in our area and focus the energy to our north. I am not worried about it coming onshore too far south.
For now, it looks like the front and heavier weather will pass between 7 am-10 am. It could temporarily affect travel in the area during that time. It looks like it will move through quickly and not linger around. It is too early to determine if anything will be left behind
Last night’s Euro
Overnight Euro
Latest Euro Precipitation
Now the GFS
GFS last night
GFS overnight
GFS latest
As you see the GFS and Euro models are still on a bit of a rollercoaster with their amounts and the Euro appears to be trending lower. But that is not necessarily a trend across the board, here are the last three runs of the NAM (short term model), showing the precip amounts increasing every run.
Last night’s NAM
Overnight NAM
Latest NAM
This run does not make a lot of sense, but I am sure it will change.
The models are starting to acknowledge the possibility of snow on Sunday, but let’s get through this one before getting too excited about Sunday.
I will update again around noon on Wednesday.
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