One Storm For Thursday; Then More Cool Dry Weather

I have searched long and hard to find a reason for optimism as we go into our stormiest part of the year, but I am not seeing anything in the long range weather models that suggest we are in for a big storm until at least Christmas. Of course the disclaimer must be that conditions are very fluid this year and 3-4 week predictions should hold little, if any merit. But here is the 30 day. Remember I published this last year and it was right on, so pardon me for being a little paranoid here:


The EC weather model has the Carson Range forecast for 1 inch of liquid precip between now and Christmas. That includes the storm coming in on Thursday which is supposed to deliver between .5 and 1 inch of precip. That storm has greatly weakened over the last several days. The storm track is heading north of us as our persistent ridge of high pressure is going to park right off the coast and is forecast to stay there for some time.

Here is a look at the EC model for the Pacific starting late next week. Notice the storm track going well to our north. Other forecasters celebrated the long awaited demise of our high pressure ridge, I did not see it however, and certainly their celebrations were premature at best.


The high pressure ridge on the right is exactly off the northern California coast and is forecast to stay there into the foreseeable future. Tahoe is highlighted in blue in the lower right corner of the map.

I still have seen no indications of El Nino playing any effect on our weather. Certainly, when we take a look at the two strong El Nino years (82/83, 97/98), this year has had nearly nothing in common with them. You may remember when I suggested in an earlier post that a sample size of 2 would be laughed at by any statistician on earth. So my fear is that we jumped the gun greatly on our predictions for this winter. I guess time will tell.

I am hoping that the weather models, which are surprisingly consistent on this are just wrong and missing something. If not we could be in for our 5th year of well below normal precip for California and the Sierra.

Stay Tuned ...