After a dry and warm Friday, the weather pattern will change as we go into the weekend, with a series of storms lined up to come through. None of the storms are particularly strong in and of themselves, but cumulatively they could add a nice boost to the mountain snowpack. The strongest of the storms gets going Saturday, with snow levels that will approach the valley floors, but it isn’t likely we will get any valley accumulations, and we will see significant shadowing out due to strong southwesterly flow over the mountains. A Winter Storm Watch is posted for the mountains starting early Saturday morning and going through Sunday morning. Snowfall amounts will range from a few inches at Lake Tahoe to a foot or more on the passes.

The weather remains unstable through the middle of next week with scattered valley rain and mountain snow.