Tahoe Weather Watch: Jan. 31 “Sunshine on my Shoulders”

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Ed’s note: Welcome to Tahoe Weather Watch, TQ’s weekly look ahead to the weekend travel and snow forecast. We’ve teamed with www.nevadacountyweather.com‘s Giovanni Paredes to bring you this  feature. Paredes has been an official National Weather Service Weather Observer since 2001 and has operated a professional weather station since 2002. Each week we’ll look at resort conditions for the upcoming weekend, the chance for snow and travel conditions so you safely get to Tahoe and back! Without further ado…

By Giovanni Paredes

 

The weather pattern over Northern California appears to be in a rut. All the weather models agree that the weather over the Tahoe Basin and surrounding Sierra will remain dry and mostly clear through the weekend. Any storm system approaching the Pacific Coast is forecast to split well offshore with the dynamics tracking into the northwest and the moisture into Baja California leaving us in the middle; dry and cool. Overnight lows this weekend will bottom out in the low 20s while daytime highs will vary along lake in the mid 40s. This is not the best news as we are at only 60 percent of average snowfall for this time of the year. I anticipate that the weather weekend will not help with these numbers. The next opportunity for any snow looks to arrive by Wednesday of next week, but this upcoming type of weather pattern tends to weaken the storms as they head inland so at this time I don’t have a lot of hope for substantial weather to affect the Tahoe Basin. Long range climate models do hint of a wide scale change to a more snowy weather pattern for the Sierra over the next two weeks or so, but that’s still a long way away.

Traveling into the Sierra this weekend is the perfect plan. Highway traffic should be light and winter driving conditions don’t get any better. Resorts have tons of snow, mild temperatures and light winds make it a great alternative to sitting around watching football.

Tags: featured

Category: Outdoors, Uncategorized, Weather