Some light snow for Friday and cold, blustery weather for Saturday but after that we are mostly mild with lots of spring-like weather

The best way I can spin our weather outlook is to emphasize the abundance of sunshine this upcoming weekend. The storm system that will consolidate well offshore is likely to result in a period of light snow on the mountain Friday afternoon but accumulations are likely to be fairly light, like under 2 inches. Saturday is a blustery and chilly day with increasing amounts of sunshine as the day progresses. Temperatures are likely to stay sub-freezing on the mountain, but this is likely one of the last such days of the season. Following a chilly night Saturday night with temperatures in the teens, sunshine will boost readings to 40 Sunday with lighter winds.

The early part of next week continues to appear mild with readings up near 50 Monday. Clouds and a bit of rainfall Monday night into Tuesday will likely keep temperatures in the 40's, extending the thaw into Tuesday. That early week weather system is not especially intense but will nonetheless have some cooler temperatures that will arrive as it clears the region later Tuesday into Tuesday night. The balance of the week then appears more seasonable and there will be a short window of time when some winter weather is possible with the passage of a wave of low pressure likely Thursday. Temperatures are then likely to moderate to above normal and above freezing levels around the weekend of the 14th-15th of the month.

In a general sense, the outlook looks just plain bad for winter weather. Every teleconnection index, the AO, EPO, NAO, PNA are all unfavorable. The jet stream in the Pacific has been a special kind of disaster with the same ridge in the jet stream parked almost the same place since late December. This being the Aleutian Island ridge underneath the unblocked Arctic creating the dynamic of the fast west to east flowing consolidated Pacific Jet stream. My inclination is to attribute the persistent weather features in the Pacific to the area of sea surface temperature warmth that has been located there. It has been of particular note in what has become a very negative PDO winter, something we haven't mentioned that much. In our original outlook, the PDO was marginally negative, became neutral in December before turning very negative in January in February. There are times when this can be deceiving but the dramatic and persistent cold in 2015 combined with the record setting California drought were a result of an extremely positive PDO (the most positive ever recorded in fact), so this data certainly matters and played a big role this year. The middle of the month thus looks very mild and likely mostly free of winter weather.