March 2005

Discussion:The east-west oriented cold front slowly sags south. It’s a complex system so it’s difficult to forecast but it looks like snow should continue this afternoon and evening with 3-6 inches accumulation before it ends by about midnight. I was hoping that the ridge top winds would die as the snow began but they seem content to keep blowing 30-40 with gusts into the 50’s. Ridge top temperatures will be around 18 degrees tonight. By morning, ridge top winds will die down to 25 from the west-northwest with temps around 16 degrees. We should have a break on Friday with some lingering low level moisture causing some clouds around the mountains but little additional accumulation.

Extended forecast: Today is the first day of our new-and-improved weather pattern. We have a series of wet storms lined up with the next one beginning about mid day on Saturday and continuing on Sunday that looks to put down perhaps a foot of snow. Ridge top temperatures will be warmer for the Saturday storm, around 25 degrees. Then there are several more pulses for the next several days, perhaps Tuesday, then Thursday and so on. Most of the later storms look to be passing to the south of us but they will still give us some snow. Most anything is better than this past month of graduate level courses in the finer points of breakable crust formation.

Tremper