Wednesday AM:

Forecast remains on track with a chilly NW slider bringing breezy cooler weather to the high country Thursday. Highs will cool to the 40s on Thursday with nights in the teens and 20s there after. The weekend looks fair and dry with seasonal temps.

Longer Range is well discussed in the past two discussions’. Cold air in the east must more out over the Atlantic to open the wave-length. This looks likely to occur during the week of Thanksgiving. It is unknown at this time, the timing of the first storm that week.  However, most likely between Thanksgiving and that following weekend.

 

The Dweeber…………………..:-)

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Tuesday AM:

The discussion below gives a good explanation of why it is dry in California. Sure, there are underlying reasons for the current pattern that are more climate driven and involve other types of teleconnections.  However, for the rest of this discussion I will discuss this weeks weather which is also important from a snow making point of view.

It appears that the warmest weather of the week is over for the time being. The wave length that exists this morning includes a sub tropical upper level ridge west of Baja, MX. The high is ridged negative tilt to 140 West all the way into the Gulf of AK.  The polar jet on the North East flank of the ridge sweeps SE through Washington State, to the Central Mid West then NE through New England via the Great Lakes states. Over the next 3 days, polar air will sweep south through the northern plains deepening that trof, so that by this Friday, deep polar air with 1000-500mb Thicknesses down to 504DM will enter the US via North Dakota and Wisconsin.  Shots of snowfall will occur in these areas this week and will intensify later this weekend.   Through this process, a dry cold front will sweep through the Great Basin and the Eastern Sierra Thursday Morning, bringing wind over the crest, breezy weather to the lower elevations and a very dry chilly air-mass.  This is a dry pattern, but will greatly enhance snow making conditions on Mammoth Mt as the week progresses with Thursday the best day for round the clock snow making.

This morning I am of the opinion that we will have a good storm or two between Thanksgiving and the end of the Month. It is possible that it may occur sooner, but better odds after the movement of the Eastern CONUS Trof off the east coast around Thanksgiving….  The new updated ECMWF EPS 45 day outlook arrives later today. I will post in Wednesday morning as it relates to our area…

 

Dr Howard and the Dweebs……………….:-)

 

PS. Thanks Tom for sharing your insight.

 

 

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I have to remind myself that this is November. I am still wearing short sleeve shirts to work and even through it was getting dark when I left the office late this afternoon, I did not need a jacket!

The pattern across the Pacific is one that features lots of splits and cutoff lows in the flow and a ridge in the mean off the west coast.  Although there has been an active pattern at times in the Pacific Northwest, California and much of the west has been out of it.  If you want to see part of the tail that is wagging the dog, just look at the 6 to 10 day temperatures outlooks. It shows a lot of cold in the central and eastern sections of the US. This cold is part of a big east central long wave Trof that assist’s in the block effecting California. This block is a high pressure ridge off the west coast.  In order for the west coast ridge to weaken, the cold anchoring Trof to the east has to move off shore to open the wave length. Once the wave length opens, the pattern of westerlies across the pacific is likely to become consolidated and west coast storms are likely to move south again into California.  Will this happen, yes!  When;  good question? So without any meaningful deterministic guidance that shows good probably in time, lets see what the ensemble’s of the global models showed today.

 

The GFS (American Models) ensembles are showing the east coast cold moving off into the Atlantic by the 17th.

Euro (ECMWF) ensembles shows the major source of cold moving off into the Atlantic about the 15th with another shot about the 20th.

The Canadian seems to be the fastest in consolidating the flow across the pacific.

The main message here is that all the global models seem to be moving the cold in the central and east, off shore. They are just different in timing.  The Canadian suggests that the change in wave length looks more likely the weekend before thanksgiving and the others around or by Thanksgiving itself….

In the meantime, enjoy the weather now, then be ready for a gradual cool down this week.   Better conditions for snow making ahead….…:-)

 

Dr Howard and the Dweebs………………….:-)