Major storm cycle brings 4-8 ft of snow Jan 7-14!

Amar - I have enjoyed reading this. Thanks for the detailed reports!

Thanks for the kind words, friends. Although I analyze this weather data for my own education and knowledge, and write these posts largely for my own internal reasons, it is nice to see that others are actually reading the posts and getting some benefit out of them.

The "table of total snowfall and precip" above has been updated with a few more sites (manually-recorded NWS COOP sites like Holden Village, Government Camp, and Crater Lake Park HQ) for which the last week of data was not yet available from the NCDC until today, along with the (minimal and bleak) snowfall data from the Siskiyou Mountains in southernmost Oregon and from the California Cascades which I had originally omitted.


As of Wednesday January 15, the persistent ridge of high pressure off the West Coast has rebuilt strongly as predicted, and models now indicate that it will continue to persist for at least 1 more week, likely 2 weeks, and possibly even longer. This is the TOTAL PRECIP expected over the next 7 days (from www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/qpf2.shtml ):



High and dry over the entire U.S. West Coast and even much of southwest BC! Time to make the best of it, and try to do those ski mountaineering trips (big, high, ambitious, etc.) which are impossible or impractical or unsafe during a normal winter.

Much more and interesting info about this highly unusual ridge and its ongoing effects can be found in the last several posts back to late 2013 on the California Weather Blog , written by a Stanford PhD candidate in atmospheric sciences.

Amar,
As a science teacher/skier, I've read this thread with great interest, and passed it along to colleagues who teach earth and space science at the middle school and high school levels. We've all learned from this. Thank you.
Think Snow!

Thanks for the keen observations and the time you have put into understanding the weather and the forecasts. It is a big help when trying to figure out where to get the goods and when they are coming.

Good summary, Amar. Muir could corn up this weekend with the high FRZ levels, as long as there's not too much mid level moisture keeping things cloudy, which is a possibility as the front off shore falls apart on Friday/Saturday. Skiability could get a little funky with the warm up on non-solar aspects that don't fully consolidate.

Andy

This analysis is very appreciated. Thanks for sharing it.