Saturday AM Update:

This will be brief…

The Upper Cut-Off has kicked inland along the Baja/CA border and is moving quickly into AZ.  Cloudiness will be quicker to more out today and tonight.   Fair weather is expected Sunday through Tuesday with a slow warm up. Next system will not be anything to write home about. It will weaken rapidly as it approaches the Southern CA coast line. According to the EC most of the precip will be confined to the coastal sections of LA…..Not the MTNs. However before it approaches the south land, some light snowfall may occur over the Southern Sierra Thanksgiving.  Mammoth MT looks to receive a glancing blow from this system with a few inches possible of snow possible.

More Later….and sooner if this changes….

 

The Dweeber……………………:-)

 

The pattern is winding down and it looks like Mammoth Mtn will end up with 12 to 14 inches over all. We got a few inches in town yesterday as the upper flow veered from the SSW to SSE to East to NE.  Light up slope brought upwards to two inches the past 12 hours…..    Currently the upper low is located off the coast of San Diego. The system is quite dynamic and is entraining a lot of moisture off the coast of Baja and pulling it over the deserts of SE CA and up through Nevada and AZ then west ward over the Southern Sierra. Mammoth is pretty much on the northern edge of the moisture field. However, some may surge a bit north again when the system lifts out Saturday. So either some light snow, or flurries will continue the next 24 to 36 hours. No significant accumulations is expected through the period.

Gradient’s:

Looking at this mornings 12z NAM at the Surface, there is a double-barreled strong surface high, one that’s 1048MB, located just east of Northern Canadian Rockies with pure Arctic Air just beyond the ribbon with Thicknesses down to 498DM and another center of 1046mb over SW Montana. The surface Gradient is toward the Cut Off…off San Diego and a bit east to its Surface Low.  The tightest gradient is between Northern and Western Nevada and the Southern Owens Valley.  So expect North Winds to really increase today over Eastern CA including the upper elevations of the Sierra, Western Nevada and the Owens Valley. The good news is that Mammoth Lakes is very protected from north winds because of the topography. Rarely are they any stronger than 20 to 35 MPH.

Expect a slow decrease in the winds later tonight and with the surface highs pushing ESE in general, Saturday will be breezy over the upper elevations but not nearly as windy as they will get today. Upper Elevations are considered mainly above 9,000 and the top 11,053.

Outlook is supported by all models in spreading some dry eastern pacific air over the region late Sunday night into Tuesday. This will be followed by a small storm, late Wednesday Night into Thanksgiving. That storm looks to bring the best chances of precip to the coastal sections of Central and Southern CA….inland to the most Southern Sierra South. The main concerns with this system at the moment is that it will remain too far off shore for much of the CA. The New 12Z GFS deterministic run is more progressive than last nights 12Z ECMWF.   If the EC jumps on the wagon over the next few day taking the system a bit closer to the coast…..confidence will increase.  However…..the big message here is that this is not a big storm by the looks of things…………..

Best preliminary estimates…..and I have to admit that this is probably on the high side,  2 to 4 inches in town and 4 to 8 over the upper elevations by Thanksgiving…..This precip forecast is early in the game and will change over the next few days either way but the bias is to lessen it……… In that the Dweebs are seeing a more progressive solution in the new 12Z GFS Run being a bit more progressive solution at this time, that is why the amounts are stated as it is in the guidance.

But as Dweebs know….Guidance is not really a forecast……it is just guidance……the Art is in the hands of the Chief……

 

Dr Howard and the Dweebs……………………….:-)