After a New Years Eve Day of teens and single digits, a new ridge will build in with a warming trend for the next several days. In fact high temps will climb into the 50s early next week.  A new system will transit the sierra about the 8th of January with some light snowfall. Light winds will be the word over the next several days with strong temperature inversions. Some of the colder valleys will go 20 below Zero tonight…

 

Stay warm…relief is on the way!

 

Happy New Year….I hope for lots of snow in our future………

 

The Dweeber……..:-)

 

Thursday  2:13 PM New Years day.

 

Comments:

As we start the New Year, I estimate that Mammoth Mt has received about 4.3 inches of Water.  This is using the Data from the DWP. I know that, that is different then the snow plots 7+ inches being tallied by Mammoth Mt. Possibility some of that is from Snowmaking?   The last survey data was two days ago, December 30th. not sure if it included the dusting on the Mountain or not. However,  there was little if any moisture in it anyway.   So officially 4.3 inches from DWP at the pass as compared to about 4.5 inches Dec 30th  2013. IE we are a little below last year this time. Comment: I do not know if DWP has been to the pass to physically measure yet.   (Where is Bob Sollima when you need him?)

Looking at all the prophecies of snowfall that many are forecasting a month ahead of time using mainly the ECMWF, one can see that the guidance is pretty much worthless this year. Sure one can say that we got such and such at the end of the month. However, that is after updating with a lesser amount forecast once or twice during the middle of the month. This drought so far is pretty amazing. I can say that we have had dry stretches historically, but this so far has been a different animal.

The non declared El Nino has apparently peaked and has actually pulled back from the warmth of Mid December. So when the three month criteria is reached, this will go down as a weak El Niño I would imagine.  I think that the MJO signal is probably the more important signal at the moment for the support of the week two and 3 in the models that have been trying to predict a break through in the westerlies. (IE Under Cutting) The question is which model related MJO RIM chart do you buy?  If you listen to Joe Bastardi, he likes the JAMA. (Japanese model)  The JAMA model is the least aggressive with the Forward Movement and Strength of the MJO. If you buy the JAMA, then you better hang it up for quite awhile…at least a few weeks. It will be ridge city for sometime to come.   With that said, a big ridge is forecasted to build along the west coast over the next 5 days. However, this is not what I am blogging about.  I am looking into Week 2 and even 3.  For early week 2, there is a storm that will move through around the 8th. This was supposed to be associated with moderate undercutting for a good wet storm for CA. However the last several days has shown a weakening of that pattern and on that idea.  Why?  Is the JAMA correct?

So the outlook from this distance is for a big warm up this weekend into Tuesday with strong temperatures inversions and possible Mono Lake POGONIP and warm temps aloft. The Freezing level is supposed to peak out according to CRFC  at 14,000 ft Tuesday at 10:00AM for Mammoth Lakes. Then next WX system will have to either crash the ridge or push over it with most of the QPF pushed over Washington state into BC.   We will likely get wind, cooling and possibly some showers.  It will be much warmer system than the last system.  This is based upon this mornings GFS and EC.    Beyond that, it will depend upon which model you buy into.  I see lots of possibilities, some of which bring us some snowfall and others that just keep the storms either splitting for the central sierra or light amounts of snow. The most aggressive was the GEM (Canadian) this morning. The Canadian is still singing a good break through tune.  I am at this time not buying into the GEM.

The ECMWF shows the MJO strengthening in phase 5 into early 6 then weakening rapidly into 7 toward the end of January. Phase 5 has a pretty good bias for below surface temps that are centered off the central coast of CA during El Nino years of .5C     I belief that this is positive for storminess for at least the coast.

See:  http://www.americanwx.com/raleighwx/MJO/MJO/JanENMJOphase5gt1500mb.gif

So if the EC is correct, then we may have a good storm later this month.   For MJO tracking see:  http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/CLIVAR/clivar_wh.shtml

For the record…..both 6 to 10 day and 8 to 14 day outlooks from NCEP today are much warmer than normal with below normal precip through the 15th of January, 2015

With so many models and so many opinions….longer range forecasting is even more confusing!

The Dweeber……………………………….:-)