Now through Wednesday we are under a strong ridge of high pressure after a nice little shot of snow late yesterday... Milder temperatures, sunny skies, and not much wind are expected. Beautiful spring weather, and spring-like surface conditions on the lower mountain.

On Thursday we see increased winds as low pressure approaches the area. Snow may be moving in Thursday night, but mostly on Friday.

Friday we expect a fast moving low pressure system to move through. Factors working against it are that it is a mid-Pacific system with some warming, weakening its gradient (wind, forcing), and that it is moving underneath a high pressure ridge to the north, which also weakens it on the way in. Factors going for it, still cold and with decent moisture by the time it reaches Colorado, as it starts out strong. Moderate snow totals are forecast for Aspen-Snowmass, southwest Colorado, and moderate to heavy for northern resorts like Winter Park and Vail, since it develops a favorable northwest wind flow across the mountains as it moves through.

Saturday and Sunday we expect a ridge of high pressure to build in, and mostly sunny skies as a result. CM

LONG RANGE: I expect the western US in general to be mostly sunny on Saturday and Sunday, but with approaching low pressure (Pacific), expect clouds and some snow showers to start moving in on Sunday across the Northwest US south to Tahoe. The first half of April looks busy, with more frequent snow for Colorado next week. We also expect spring (into May and June) to be more dry than usual for Colorado, as persistent low pressure across the west coast and eastern Pacific does not allow for much moisture to move north from the tropics for spring thunderstorm activity. I will be watching.

It has been a while since we updated this outlook. When paying full attention to any area we forecast for, which I have been watching weather patterns for (the western US also) since the 1970's, I put my forecasts of weather events/ timing/ snow totals up against any, especially in the long range. We gained quite a reputation for our Tahoe and Utah forecasts over a span of almost 15 years, gaining the attention of TV stations who used the forecasts with no mention of source, a movie financier who wanted me to be a part of a "think tank" group of professionals, radio stations, etc. Even major growers/ ag interests were using these free forecasts (for the longer range accuracy of weather event timing and significance), as an accurate long range forecaster is the equivalent of a "fortune teller", as told to me by the movie financier. There are competitors who charge for their info, and we do not, even though our information is a paid service in other formats we continue to deliver to agriculture customers to this day (Circa 1995). As I stated, I put my forecasts up against anyone else's in the area.

We gave out over $50,000 in SWAG (lodging, tickets, passes, gear, even Nativa Naturals food) from 2009-2011, stuff we couldn't even afford to buy ourselves, to many people from SFO and SAC, TVL area. If you check my bio you will see my story, there is a LOT more to it than what I am typing here.

I have received many emails due to the missing updates. The answer is, we have not had any support from advertisers, resorts, anyone in this region since around 2013. I continued on with the forecasting hoping for some support in the form of advertising or sponsorship, but it didn't happen, and I do not know anyone else who works for free.

That said, I would like to get these forecast outlooks going again-->

I never charged the site user for this service. The skier/ snowboarder has enough to pay for with fuel, lift tickets and passes, gear, life, etc., and I feel it is a service that should be provided by the host, the resort, to its visitors, even if in the form of advertising on the site. I have the same awesome, nice traffic as the rest of the snow sports niche sites, but am not going to run Google ads so they can charge $20/ cpm and give us less than a dollar cpm.

That said... I watch Colorado as that is where the business is for me. Recently, Bogus Basin joined the client list and now we work up a complete custom forecast for them as well, with a long range outlook. I will be drawing from that already completed work to deliver you a broad-brush longer range outlook for the western US, for now. I hope it is useful for you:

LONGER RANGE: The 9th-10th of January another low pressure system moves in with good potential snowfall, significant snow for the west coast mainly, less as we move inland, southern areas favored like southwest US areas,The 11-12th (roughly) and then the 13th-20th of January, we expect unsettled conditions to continue dominating the western US (had this forecast for over a month, early Dec forecast for this mid-late Jan time frame), and we expect a prominent moisture tap from the tropics, as El Nino starts to show itself more... So basically, between the 9th and 20th, we expect many more storms to move through with snow for most western US resort areas, down south to including Southern California and even favoring the southwest US as a more southerly track seems more likely... This unsettled period should last into around the 18th-20th of January, then in the last part of Jan and early February (through the 8th of Feb maybe), we start off with a snow down time under more dominant high pressure ridging. More to come. CM