The Wait Continues

It’s beginning to feel a bit cooler in Tahoe. The weather has definitely not been ideal for those of us that are anxious to start our ski season. It’s also not ideal for resorts that are hoping for a busy holiday season. But we are not quite there yet. Every day, I tell myself that this might be my last bike ride for a while. But each day, the snow has not fallen yet, so we bring out the bikes once again.

That said, things are changing. The dirt trails are starting to get too soggy in some places, and I don’t like to be that guy that leaves big ruts in the trail. For the last two days, we stuck to the pavement on our townies. I also added in long underwear today to cut the chill, allowing for a much longer ride this morning. If the afternoon forecast discussions are correct, this may have been the last ride.

It’s not that we haven’t had good storm systems in California the last week. The storms are there. The moisture is there. But with the storms diving south along the coast, we get stuck in the warm southerly flow coming up from Baja. That is not conducive to lowering snow levels. You can easily see that flow from the south in this GIF from the last 24 hours or so.

For the most part, California has escaped without any huge wildfire events. There was an unfortunate wildfire, the Pack Fire, near Crowley Lake yesterday just south of Mammoth. Downslope winds quickly spread a fire to more than 3000 acres in just a few hours, burning 28 structures before the rain passed the crest of the Sierra, dousing the severity of the fire. We have seen multiple episodes of these type of downslope fires along the east slope in Reno, Carson City, Walker and now Crowley Lake. Almost all of those fires have been during the month of November. Hopefully we don’t see any more fires before winter sets in.

This morning, the Area Forecast Discussion for the Reno office of NOAA shared the frustration of forecasting storms over the last week:

Ok, November. We`re going to take this one pesky storm at a time.
The progressive pattern is giving October vibes with storms
detouring off the original forecast tracks. Long story, short: the
pattern does appear to remain active and stormy, but the details
will be hard to pin down with each of the Pacific storms that
line up off the West Coast.

The afternoon discussion added a bit more hope that the wait for snow may be coming to an end, with snow levels potentially dropping 3000′ overnight as the colder air finally gets a chance to move into the Sierra. I am ready for it!! Actually I am not…having not warmed up the snowblower, put out the driveway markers or located any snow shovels. But in my mind, I am ready for snow season.

We should see continuing snow throughout the up coming week, though not in any particularly huge amounts. That said, the temperatures should remain low enough to allow snowmaking teams to get into action. Mount Rose and Mammoth Mountain are both chomping at the bit to get some terrain open. Teams at Palisades and Alpine Meadows have to get going quickly to make an opening by the 27th happen.

Not all of the models are 100% on board. Looking at the latest runs, both the GFS and the Euro are seeing up to 2 feet of snow by Friday morning. The other models have somewhat less due to possible continued higher snow levels.

I’ll leave you with a haiku of hope today. Nothing else has worked yet so we will try this:

Clouds drift low and hush—
Sierra snowlines descend,
Quiet grace returns.

Sunday morning update:

.DISCUSSION...
Well, to put it lightly, we are pretty disappointed in how the
system is evolving early this morning. The upper low is centered
across central CA as of 1AM and continues to swing precipitation
bands from south to north across California and Nevada. The heaviest
precipitation remains west of the crest across the CA coastline,
while we wait for our turn here in western NV and the eastern
Sierra. Wetting rains panned out nicely Saturday evening for much of
the region, but we`re still patiently awaiting our mountain snow.