Winter Weather Alert for the West Coast – Strong storm lining up to dump some snow across the state

By adam wright on March 16, 2012

Categories: Home Page Weather, Snow and Weather Forecast for the US West Coast, solspot | Comments (zero)

A strong, cold, winter storm is moving into California over the weekend and is forecast to drop several feet of new snow on local resorts.

We are actually starting our transition to spring summer mode…taking our human SNOW forecasts offline this week…. I have been meaning to put up a new post with some good links to our resort specific forecasts that give you new updates several times throughout the day and give a solid 7-day forecast (that if you geek out on the weather stuff you can you can look at the forecasted conditions hour-by-hour for a full 7-days).

In the meantime here is a quick update for the West Coast…but focusing mostly on Socal and the Southern Sierras, since they have gotten ripped off in the snow department this winter.

Mammoth - forecast models are showing anywhere from 2-3′ of new snow falling starting tonight and holding through to Saturday night. Unfortunately it comes with a full winter storm warning…so while there will be freshies over the weekend winds near the base of the mountain are expected to be in the 25-35 mph range with gusts hitting 85-mph across the Sierra Ridge. The Lake Tahoe area will see a very similar weather set up, but will likely have wetter snow that drops at higher elevations than the leeward portions of the Sierras where Mammoth is located.

Southern California…the majority of the storm is heading our way for Saturday with the peak of the storm hitting Saturday night and into Sunday. I am seeing varying snowfall expectations for the Big Bear region…with the NWS calling for snow levels to drop to nearly 2000 feet…and 1-2″ of snow spread across the areas above that elevation. On the more resort focused forecasts they are calling for at least several inches for all of the Socal resorts with nearly 15-20+ inches of snow hitting areas like Snow Summit and Bear Mountain…even Baldy is forecast to see something close to 12-15+ inches. A lot will depend on how long the storm sits in place but there will definitely be some new snow. Unfortunately like the Sierras…the National Weather Service is putting our local mountains on winter storm warnings…and are expecting 30-55 mph gusts on mountains over 4000 feet and some wind gusts nearing 75-mph at the highest elevations.

To boil it down, yes there will be plenty of snow but the weather is going to royally jack it up.

Here are some links to the most popular resorts here in range of Socal…count on more snow and stronger storm conditions as you move further up into Oregon and Washington, where resorts already have like 200-250 inch bases (lucky jerks).

Snow Summit
Bear Mountain
Mountain High
Mt. Baldy
Mammoth Mountain
June Mountain

You can check out the full list of resorts with upcoming snow over the next 72 hours across the country.http://snow.solspot.com/forecasting-upcoming-72-hour-snow

Or use these links to focus on a particular region…

Alaska | Idaho | Nevada | Northern California | Southern California | Oregon | Washington