Wednesday 

One last sunny day for Wednesday. Temps will be seasonal with highs in the mid to upper 30's with winds in the 15 - 20 MPH range out of the Southwest. It will be the last day in the next 5 that won't feature active weather. 

Thursday & Friday Rain/Snow

It's not often there's significant model disagreement only a day or 2 out... but that's what we're dealing with still. While my title suggests that the Euro has trended drier like the GFS, it's still showing a lot of precip compared to the GFS, which is still showing almost nothing. I'm just going to have to do the best I can regarding the forecast given how poorly the models are evolving this storm.  

Temps will be cooler with highs in the mid to lower 30's and winds will be ramping up starting Thursday morning. Gusts could be in the 50 - 60 MPH range on the exposed ridges by the late afternoon. Winds will drop down a bit Friday with still gusty conditions. 

Snow levels are going to be tricky, but generally I don't believe it's going to snow very much on most of the mtns. Resorts that have significant terrain above 8K FT will fare the best. At this time I think the snow level will be hovering in the 7500 to 8200 FT range. So quite a few mountains are not likely to see snow at their bases at all. 

Here's the forecasted 700mb temps through the weekend on the Euro, which is the model that has been showing the precip the last few days: 

You can see that most of the time the temps are above freezing and this is at the 10K FT level. There is a brief window of temps that are -2 to -3C which would be snow levels in the 7K FT range. The blended forecast on OpenSnow is showing slightly higher totals that I would expect right now. For example, the Mt. Baldy forecast is for 4 - 8 inches on Thursday night at 7,700 FT. I could see a couple inches fall down there but I highly doubt it would be 8 inches given the very low snow ratios.

Most of the precip should fall Thursday night which is also during the coldest time period so the chances for snow have increased a little bit over yesterday. This all assuming the the Euro and other models are correct and that the GFS has gone off the wall with no moisture coming in. I'll show you the full precip maps once we talk about the weekend. 

Right now my forecast is for mostly rain below 7,400 FT with snow and rain between 7K & 8K with 1 - 3 inches of accumulation across the region and then 3 - 6 inches of accumulation above 8,200 FT. 

Saturday & Sunday

Saturday should start out sunny but there could be breezy conditions in the 20 - 30 MPH range out of the Southwest. By Saturday night though the Euro shows yet another system coming through. The GFS once again does not support this solution... 

Let's take a look at the precip totals through Monday...

Euro

WPC

GFS

The Euro and WPC look quite similar with both of them heavily favoring the San Gabriels. The orientation of the system with slightly more South Southwest winds will tend for that to happen. Remember this is total precip through Monday afternoon which includes the Thursday into Friday system. And then there's the GFS... Showing literally nothing even reaching the Big Bear Mtns. What a headache... eh?

I'm not buying the GFS fully dry scenario since the Euro has other model support including the NAM and WPC and Canadian. I like that the Euro has trended downward in precip and is at least more in line with the GFS. 

I'll keep providing updates throughout this week to these series of storms. If the Euro pans out we could see a couple more inches of snow possible Sunday into Monday. Once again if you look at the 10K FT level temps you'll see there's still quite warm and hovering close to zero which means the snow levels will start out quite high and maybe drop below 7K FT for a brief window. 

Hopefully another day will help discern this forecast. You can really see how the Ensemble Means of the GFS and Euro are quiet at odds. The Euro is showing well over double what the GFS shows... 

The week of December 4th might start a little showery and snowy if the Euro is correct on Sunday into Monday but it's likely to quickly dry out. Temps should be cool but seasonal in the mid to upper 30's on mtns. 

Winds are likely to stay light and there should be plenty of sun. 

The precip anomaly forecast through all of next week on the GFS Ensemble mean is dry... 

So, at this time I'm not expecting next week to be an exciting week weather wise. We'll have to see how much snow we might be able to squeeze out of this system with the higher snow levels. 

Till the next one.. Mike out.