Monday, October 5, 2009

California Dreamin? Wild weather...


There has been some wild weather these past few weeks! This will be my 6th winter here, and I have not seen such a long "cold" snap that I can remember in October. I took this lovely photo of the first snow on Northstar the other day on my way to work.

Check out this blog from Porters about the waves on Tahoe the other day. 2 boats capsized and there is a guy surfing!
http://www.porterstahoe.com/2009/10/surfs-up-on-lake-tahoe.asp

And, we can't talk about the weather without some commentary from Weather Vane Brad...

Nice warming trend in our area will continue through the weekend. Nice cold mountain nights and crisp, slightly cool fall days with the warmest temps just shy of 65 degrees and bright sunny skies.

Everything changes dramatically Tuesday or Tuesday night. The models are still very inconsistent. Lots of disturbances in the Pacific due to the remnants of an Asian Typhoon. Many of the models have the high pressure staying in place and pushing all systems and moisture just to our North giving us nothing more than increased cloud cover and some stiff breeze.

Some, however, have the ridge flattening out which would allow the moisture to hit us dead on. The first system is fueled by the old Typhoon with two large sub tropical moisture plumes. Because of where the moisture is coming from (the tropics) and lack of a cold front snow levels would remain very high. My best guess would be 8000 feet. We are talking inches of rain with this baby and feet of snow above 8000 feet. Some websites are predicting 4 inches of precipitation!

I always like to stay somewhere in-between. I would be happy with a couple inches of rain and maybe a quick shot of snow on the end if we can get lucky with a late arriving cold front.
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This would be a great start to our water year as October is the first month for the 2010 water year. A nice heavy rain would knock down all the dust in the basin making it ready for a good heavy blanket of winter snow and in the mean time our trails would become hard and tacky rather than slippery and dusty as they are now. Great for mountain biking until the first big snow does come.

El Nino is still fizzling. Don’t get overly excited about this.

(I thought we were supposed to get 800 inches of snow?!?)

OK. So let's be honest, the weather is still beautiful, this is perfect hiking and mountain biking weather, and I am just complaining that the nights are getting a little chilly...Undoubtedly, snow is on the way and we are all very excited for a big winter...start those ski conditioning classes now!

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