Snows start mid-weekend and continue into Opening Day
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Lots of weather to talk about for the upcoming week, with a couple of rounds of heavy snows likely starting later Saturday and extending into Thanksgiving week.
Currently, a weak wave to our northeast has brought cloudiness and some high elevation flurries to our area. This wave will reinforce the cold valley temperatures before they will moderate a bit by tomorrow afternoon. Concurrently, a west coast ridge will be weakened as two waves move through it; the first moves over our area on Thursday and may produce some minor accumulations Thursday night.
The second wave takes a southerly track through the desert southwest and looks to miss our area entirely. However, these waves destroy the west coast ridge and allow another and much stronger Pacific storm to cross the northwest coast late on Friday and move over our area late Saturday night or Sunday. This is forecast to begin a long-duration snowfall event that may last most of Thanksgiving week as additional waves of energy in moist and cold northwest flow move over our area.
Snow will begin ahead of the wave around Saturday afternoon and will become heavy overnight. Depending on when the snow starts Saturday, there may be as much as 5-10” of new snow on the hill by Sunday morning. Additional waves of energy will keep Sunday cold and snowy, with another 5-10” of snow by Monday morning. Snow may taper off on Monday before increasing again on Tuesday as yet another moist and cool wave in northwest flow moves over our area, likely leading to additional significant snow accumulations for Wednesday’s Scholarship Day.
By midweek, there is considerable disagreement between the models, though at this point I would side with the European ECMWF which shows another cold and snowy arctic outbreak around Thanksgiving Day.
