A few mountain snow showers are showing up on webcams and radar around the region this morning as a passing shortwave trough stirs things up a bit.
In the coming days temps should be mild at lower elevations under southwest flow. A monster area of low pressure will make its way down the California coast giving the models plenty to think about how it is going to interact with us and when.
Here is what that closed circulation low pressure looks like tomorrow afternoon dumping snow in the Sierra.
As you may recall me saying in the past, the GFS is almost always a bit too fast taking the system east while the Euro is usually too slow initially. So the timing looks like Thursday or Friday to me. Since we have no idea what track it is going to take we won’t really be able to speculate where the snow will fall or how much.
The Euro is pretty conservative with its precipitation totals. The GFS is the most aggressive and the Canadian is right between them. I am going to be optimistic and display the liquid totals as I track this storm this week. Here are the totals ending next Saturday.
Euro
The first thing you can see on the Euro is that the bulk of the precipitation falls up north indicating heavier NW flow in the system and a more northerly track.
The GFS is much different
The GFS is showing strong SW flow for at least part of the storm as evidenced by the heavier totals near Wolf Creek and the even spread of precip across areas further south.
The Canadian has a similar solution but not as aggressive as the GFS
The other day I mentioned tracking the Euro weeklies. There was no movement on those 32 and 46-day snowfall totals yet. Interestingly enough, however, it showed total precipitation slightly below average over the next 32 days but average for the 46-day period which obviously indicates a well above period of precipitation for the first half of May. That is good news as we approach the fire season!
So the spring tug of war continues. Enjoy the next few days of slightly above normal temps and stay tuned as we track and try to figure out what the weather future holds as we approach mid to late next week.
Thanks for following and supporting the site. Next update Sunday.
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