After a bit of a break in the action, some more wintry weather will roll into the region over the weekend. A northwest flow will bring a series of weak to moderate storms down out of the Gulf of Alaska. The first one on Saturday isn’t very impressive, but it could bring a few inches of snow in the mountains, and since its track comes almost parallel to the mountains, we shouldn’t see a lot of shadowing in the valley. Temperatures will remain cold enough for snow levels to reach the valley floor through Monday.

A second and more significant storm comes through late Sunday into Monday, with enough punch to kick off a Winter Weather Advisory for the mountains Sunday night into Monday Morning. The mountains could see a few inches at lake level with nearly foot possible on the crests of the mountains. In the valley, the timing is such that there could be some impact on the Monday morning commute.

After a slight chance of a few snow showers Tuesday, it looks like the skies will clear under a building ridge of high pressure resulting in a sunny second half of next week.

The records keep falling this historic winter. Earlier this week, Reno the Reno rain gauge received a total of 12.74” of precipitation since the beginning of the water year (Oct. 1). Even though we are less than five months into the water year, that broke the record for the entire water year, set back in 1982-83. Who knows where we will end up when it is all said and done.

From a snowpack standpoint, all four of our main water basins (Truckee, Tahoe, Carson and Walker) are at record levels for this time of year, and the Carson and Walker are nearly at all-time highs. And even if we didn’t get another flake of snow in the Tahoe Basin, we would still finish the snow year at about 200% of average!