With the La Nina this Winter we are expecting the storm track to be full force into the Pacific NW, and then into the Northern Rockies. That pattern has not setup yet due to a large area of high pressure off the West Coast over the past month. The pattern is going change though over the Christmas weekend and into next week.
We start with one last snow event from the old pattern as a cold trough dives down the Rockies again on Wednesday and Thursday. That will spread snow down the entire range from Idaho to New Mexico with amounts of 6-12 inches for most mountain areas in MT, ID, WY, UT, CO, and NM. Here is the precip map for this storm.
and the corresponding snowfall amounts…
Things will quiet down for the weekend before the pattern shifts and the jetstream gets ready to take aim at the Pacific NW. It looks like there will be a storm coming onshore into the Pacific NW Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They will then take a path more to the East instead of South down the entire Rocky Mountain range.
We should see several more more inches in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. It will be a close call in the Salt Lake area right on the Southern edge of the storm track. Let’s watch the precipitation amounts accumulate here with each storm next week. pay attention to the Northern ranges in Idaho.
Let’s start again with the amounts through Thursday from this first storm.
Then after the Monday storm.
The storms start to get stronger as we go throught the week. Here is after the Wednesday storm.
This would be a couple of feet or more accumulating in Northern Idaho and Western Montana from Monday thru Thursday. It will be getting close to that in Jackson and Western Wyoming, and then we could see a foot over the 3 day period in Utah and NW Colorado. There is another storm coming in on Friday to bring even more snow to the same areas.
This pattern looks to continue right into the first week of the New Year. This is the pattern setting up that has been forecasted for this Winter bringing above average snowfall from the Pacific NW across the Northern half of the Rockies. Winter is here and hopefully it’s here to stay for a while now. Another update next Wednesday as we take a closer look at the first 2 weeks of January. BA
