Congratulations everyone ! We managed to take a January meltdown kind of weekend and turn it into a mostly snow event. It's like a long trip out of some deep, dark dungeon and we managed to find our way to the beam of light. As someone who follows this stuff every day, I found this journey to be rather remarkable and I've certainly seen a few go the other direction so I'm going to drink to this one and enjoy the moment.
Unfortunately, we still have to contend with Friday (Jan 9). Breaks in the overcast that provided some blue sky late on Thursday will allow temperatures to drop in to the teens and low 20's Friday morning. This is good, since we'll need every bit of extra cushion. The challenge really is to keep the wind down for as much of the day as possible. When added to milder, above freezing temperatures, wind can eat a lot of snow and in this case, has the effect of mixing even milder temperatures situated aloft, down to ground level. South winds have a decidedly negative relationship with our valley. Our localized "chinook" so to speak since they roar down off the Granville Gulf State Forest high country and produce wind gusts that often take us by surprise. I am emotionally scared by an event back in early February 2019, when south winds did just this over very deep snow cover and just obliterated it across low lying areas. Getting a morning with mostly sub-freezing temperatures and lower winds help prevent against that catastrophe repeating. Winds will increase during the afternoon and send temperatures into the low 40's I think. We also are expecting about a tenth of an inch of rain which I consider a moral victory given how the data looked a week ago. The wind-induced mild weather continues into the early evening with rain tapering off and then its over. Perhaps we can limit the period of wind if the inversion manages to hold, but regardless, temperatures and dewpoints willl drop by Saturday morning and the cold is just strong enough for a mostly sub-freezing day, albeit just barely, on the mountain.
The storm system approaching for Saturday night, at least the initial area of low pressure, looks considerably weaker and this is a big reason for a colder looking storm. A new area of low pressure is expected to take shape over the Deep South and become the primary storm and this makes the entire weather situation dramatically different verses how it all looked 48 or 72 hours ago. The downside just involves the amount of precipitation since a weaker storm will produce less and farther south. I'll take the trade off. The ski day Saturday should stay dry with snow developing Saturday evening and continuing into early Saturday morning. This looks like a rather standard 3-6 snow given that we are not located in the most ideal conveyor of moisture; furthermore, we get hit with a punch of dry air that should minimize any snowfall for early Sunday. Fluffier snow showers, later Sunday into Sunday night are likely to add to the snow totals for the ski day on Monday to the tune of a few inches.
The 2nd full week of January is expected to remain above normal yet colder than week 1 and mostly below the freezing mark. I am intrigued with the setup in the late Wednesday to Thursday time frame since a long wave amplification is expected without the help of the polar jet. Whether we can mix all the ingredients together for an east coast storm I can't answer yet, but I can provide folks with that possibility. Recall that next week is when the Pacific jet weakens and is expected to weaken further as we progress toward MLK weekend. By that point, we should see more intense intrusions of cold which will set us up for an arctic and wintry week to follow. La Nina still appears to be a factor in this game, deflecting some of this cold out of the south and providing the setup for additional winter storms.
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