There’s definitely a buzz brewing about a real return to winter in the Tahoe Basin. The barometer has been dropping like a rock, winds are firing up, and there was a gorgeous red sunset that let us know a storm is moving in.
The forecasters are all in agreement that this storm will be colder that the last round, and that cold is here to stay for a while. For Wednesday and Thursday, there’s 4-8 inches in the forecast for lake level, with up to a foot at the crest. The setup may be just right for this storm. Warm temps today will hopefully mean the storm starts with some rain and then changes to snow, which helps the new snow bond to an icy surface.
There’s a smaller storm on tap for Friday, another for Sunday which is possibly bringing another foot or two. Things get going even stronger next week with some back to back storms. BA at TahoeWeatherDiscussion.com is saying that 4 to 5 feet of new snow by Christmas is looking likely. Here’s the updated precipitation forecast for the next 5 days and its looking better every day:
Over at the TahoeWeatherBlog.com, Paul is once again pulling together a very wet scenario for the next four weeks. Once again, he is showing the Euro model with more than 10 inches of precipitation through the first week of January, with this cycle being much colder than the last. Now I know some people would say there is no way to forecast the weather that far out – but Paul has been right on in calling both the October snow event and the December rain event several weeks before each occurred. Here’s the map from TahoeWeatherBlog.com:
So wash a car, burn some skis, flush some ice cubes and pray for the snow to keep coming.