Meager snow for Saturday morning followed by much better storm on Monday

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Temperatures are running about ten degrees above our average of 39 F this Thursday afternoon under mostly cloudy skies, with peeks of sun. A couple of weak storms passing through today and Friday night into Saturday morning look to bring only slight chances for snow, with meager accumulations possible on Saturday. A more potent storm is becoming more likely for Monday into Tuesday morning followed by dry weather through Thanksgiving.

I guess under the current circumstances it is not surprising that both the storm and Opening Day that were expected for this Saturday have gone missing. That storm, as well as the current cloudiness over our area are the result of a couple of ripples in the fast westerly flow of the jet stream passing near our area. While I don’t expect any precipitation from today’s storm, there is a better chance of some meager accumulations from Friday night into Saturday morning of up to an inch or two.

A ridge of high pressure ahead of a potent storm currently in the Bering Sea is forecast to build over our area for a nice Sunday. The Bering Sea storm is forecast to cross the Gulf of Alaska and make landfall on the West Coast later that day before affecting our area with likely snowfall on Monday through Tuesday morning. The cold front associated with the storm is currently timed to be through our area by noon on Monday, with winds shifting to be from the west to the favorable northwest. Though the evolution of the storm is uncertain at this time, current weather forecast models have generally light to moderate snowfall over our area through the rest of the day and overnight before tapering off during Tuesday morning, leaving around 5-10” of accumulations.

A ridge of high pressure behind the storm should bring clearing skies later Tuesday and Wednesday before substantial weather forecast model disagreement appears for Thanksgiving. And while the European ECMWF has a much stronger storm crossing the West Coast on Wednesday as compared to the American GFS (which incidentally has trended strongly towards the ECMWF for the Monday storm), both keep our area dry, with the ECMWF splitting the storm around northern Colorado and the GFS quickly moving a shallow wave to our north.

We can only hope at this point that both are wrong, and it is possible that a compromise solution may bring some sort of storm overhead for Thanksgiving. With such a range of possibilities for Thursday, I’ll refrain from commenting on the weather forecast for the following weekend until my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.