The cold pool that slowly drifted southeast over the Great Valley yesterday and into Southern Ca this morning kept temperatures in the mid teens in town and into the single digits up on Mammoth Mtn  Saturday.  With increasing subsidence this morning, valleys chilled out to well below zero in many locations. Now the short road to quickly moderating high temperatures begins and warmer temps are ahead!

PS. there will still be a pretty good surface gradient today. Winds will continue strong over the Sierra Crest out of the north to 60mph.

Medium Range:

The consensus of the ensembles are in and the next series of systems will drive mainly to our north. The central pacific Ridge will be splitting the energy with the subtropical jet lifting northeast into Northern Ca. by mid week. This will bring some light warm advection snowfalls to the upper elevations and snow levels will rise this week. There are mainly two systems to deal with.

1.  A mid latitude surface low will spin up west off the central coast out about 1400 miles west of Mammoth tracking NE Tuesday. This system is moderately wet with its main impact over the north coast of California into southern OR.  Several inches of rain are expected from this mid latitude storm there. The storm will drag a weakening front into the Central Sierra during the day on Wednesday. At the moment, QPF from the GFS and HPC is not all that impressive.  About .25 to .35 at most.   So Mammoth might get up to 5 inches over the upper terrain and some 1 to 3 inches around town.  

It is probably a bit early to get specific on the QPF as we are trending from a quite cold dry air mass to one that is milder and more moist.  Will update in the morning for Wednesday.  The main message here is that temperatures will be moving into the 40s by mid-week with stronger winds over the upper elevations likely by Wednesday.

2. The upper jet will be lifting further north Friday into Saturday providing higher heights….Further warming is expected by next Saturday. By Sunday, the upper jet sags south again and by Sunday afternoon or night, some light snowfall may return to the Mammoth Area along with some cooling. 

3. There after…a series of short waves will move from west to east in a zonal flow, bringing periods of snowfall. It’s too early to tell much more than that. The 6 to 10 day and 8 t0 14 days outlooks keep somewhat above normal precipitation for our area. The storm track suggest that mild maritime pacific air will prevail within the flow at 700mb.



Dr Howard and the Dweebs……………………………………:-)



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Disclaimer: I have been a hobbyist meteorologist for over 30 years here in the Mammoth area and I do this for my personal enjoyment. The National Weather Service saves lives every day . . . I do not. When making important planning decisions please use information provided by the National Weather Service as they are the most knowledgeable and accurate information source available today.