It’s been a while but we will have a fairly sunny weekend, with pretty strong temperature inversions, which will create some dicey air quality problems in the Truckee Meadows. A large ridge of high pressure will build over the Great basin, but with the snow on the ground and light winds, cold air will get trapped into the valleys yielding valley highs in the 30s while Tahoe communities will likely top out in the 40s.

The clear and dry weather continues until mid-next week when another series of fairly warm storms move into the region.

By any measure this has been a pretty extraordinary year precipitation-wise. But just where do we stand in terms of a whole winter? Let’s put it this way: If we didn’t get another flake of snow for the rest of the winter snowpack season, we would still finish above average in all four of our river basins. In some cases, well above average. In fact, both the Tahoe and Carson River Basins are at the highest they have ever been at this time of year. With more to come next week at the least.