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3 Storms for the PNW and Lake Tahoe

By November 11, 2024No Comments

Nov 11, 2024

Around the PNW today.

Daily Snow Stake 

GFS All Snow thru Nov 20, 500mb Flow, Click/Animate

PNW, Lake Tahoe Storm (3 Waves thru Nov 16th) Click/Animate

Projected 3-wave Totals

Forecast

Summary

We have a series of storms that will be dropping into the PNW, sliding down to Lake Tahoe, and will move thru Utah Tomorrow afternoon and Colorado on Wednesday.  This is a fast-moving system for Utah and Colorado with most of the snow falling will be from the first wave.  Two more waves will hit the PNW and Lake Tahoe by Fri/Sat with total snowfall totals expected to be in the 1-2 feet range by Saturday.

We have been waiting for a decent system to move thru Lake Tahoe and we are finally going to get it. We have three waves moving into the lake, and Pacific Northwest, over the next 5 days.  First the Lake, snow levels tonight will be around 7-8000 ft.  Resorts along the crest will fare the best with 4-8 inches expected above 8000 ft.  

In the Cascades, snow levels dropping throughout the day today down to around 3500ft.  Not much snow today but tonight will be decent with 3-6 likely for the northern Cascades, Crystal Mountain, with higher amounts for Mt Baker, in the 4-8 range.   6-10 on the Oregon side–for Mt Hood and Bachelor.

Snow will continue in the PNW thru Thursday, adding similar amounts along the way.

Second Wave Moves in on Wednesday

Back to the Lake, the second wave moves in late Wednesday or early Thursday morning.  

Third Wave Friday

I will have more on these storms this afternoon.

Teleconnections

The Madden Julian Oscillation is currently in Phase 1 and is projected to go into neutral territory, in the next couple of days.  The chart shows where the MJO has been (red line) with the dates indicated by number. 

The phases are divided into 8 triangles to show where the phenomenon is located, and its strength, along the equator.  The green line is the projected path that the ensemble GFS projects for the next 15 days, along with the spaghetti model projections from single runs.  

It’s a little hard to understand.  I found a better demonstration of the MJO from the Australian Goverments Bureau of Meteorology.  Check out this animation below, this is the projected phase and location of the MJO beginning November 4th, through December 3rd.

When you think of the MJO, think of convective energy.  The animation begins with above average strength of convective energy (brown shading) located in the western hemisphere, off of the African coast moving east (phase 8).  This convective energy, when in phases 6, 7 and 8, add fuel to the storms coming off of the Pacific Ocean.  The storms are visibly bigger and there are more of them. 

That is a long-winded explanation of why the GFS storm for the 13th disappeared.  Hopefully this give you a greater understanding of how important the MJO is to our weather.

GFS thru Nov 17th, GFS for BC and AB Canada, All Snow Let It Go, GFS 500mb Click/Animate

 

LONG-RANGE TEST FORECAST +/- 2 days tolerance (Made October 15th)

October 29th, Tahoe, Utah and Colorado                           Verified

November 2 and 4th (2 Waves), Utah and Colorado        Verified

November 8-9th, Utah and Colorado                                  Verified 2 Early

November 13th, Pacific Northwest                                      On GFS, 1 Day Early

November 17th, Utah and Colorado                                   On GFS 1 Day Early

November 22nd, Utah and Colorado                                  On GFS on time

December 3rd, Utah and Colorado                                     Not in Range

Thank you for reading the blog and as always if you have any questions, please email me at Mike@FutureSnow.co.  We have received many great questions, and it is a pleasure to answer them, so don’t hesitate to ask.

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